


For You There's No Warning

by Zee (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Arguing, Banter, Bottom Derek, Facials, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 17:25:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek doesn’t know how Stiles always does this every time they have to work together: he gets Derek caught up in these ridiculous, circular conversations and Derek finds himself arguing over inconsequential things that he doesn’t actually feel that strongly about.  It’s like Stiles has an innate ability to bring Derek down to his level of immaturity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For You There's No Warning

**Author's Note:**

> This is vaguely future fic, set during Stiles' junior year of high school. Description of past sexual trauma and canon-typical violence. The title is from the song [Star Bodies](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/newpornographers/starbodies.html) by The New Pornographers. Endless amounts of thank you to etben for betaing, and to drunktuesdays for all of the cheerleading, cajoling, pestering and bullying that it took to get me to actually write this. Without Lea this would neeeeever have gotten finished.

Derek can hear footsteps and smell Stiles' anxiety and adrenaline long before Stiles stumbles into the room and the light flickers on.

"Ohmygod. Oh, wow, you scared me. Not that that can really be considered your fault, I guess, since you're all tied up and can't, like, jump out of the shadows to eat my face or anything. Still, Jesus, I wasn't expecting to find you in a- what is this, a broom closet? A cupboard? Have they been keeping you in Harry Potter’s room under the stairs?"

Derek is on his knees with his wrists behind him, bound to his ankles. His mouth is gagged with three wolfsbane ropes twisted together, and he's blindfolded; it's difficult to convey anger and impatience in such a state, but maybe Stiles can just magically feel how hard Derek is glaring at him.

Stiles, the idiot, is still talking instead of moving. "There are way fewer hunters in this secret hideout than we thought, by the way, turns out we were giving them way too much credit-"

Derek manages as much of a growl as he can with his mouth stuffed with rope. It comes out garbled and non-threatening, but still maybe gets some of his point across. 

"Oh right," Stiles says, rushing forward to kneel next to Derek. "You are so lucky that I got the Knots merit badge in Boy Scouts, because these look kind of hardcore.” 

Derek feels cold fingertips brush his temples, and then the blindfold is gone and all he sees is light. It hurts. He has to blink several times before anything comes into focus. The lighting in this room isn’t even bright. He’s not sure if the sensitivity is an effect of the wolfsbane or just the natural result of being blindfolded for however long it’s been—24 hours? Longer? 

“Hold still. Ugh, gross, you’ve drooled on this.” Stiles is now trying to remove the gag, but instead of untying the ropes that are knotted together at the base of Derek’s skull, he’s trying to tug the ropes out of Derek’s mouth and down over his chin. Since they’re tight enough to keep Derek from talking, it seems to be a struggle for Stiles, and in the process he’s digging his fingers into the raw, bloody edges of Derek’s mouth. It’s awkward plus it hurts like hell, and Derek can feel his teeth elongating in response. 

Stiles’ fingers immediately go away. His face comes further into Derek’s field of vision and he looks indignant, his mouth open. “Um, tell me you’re not _literally_ going to bite my hand off for trying to help you.” 

Derek glares and tries to make noises that express that he’s not going to bite Stiles, he has more control than that and Stiles needs to stop being a moron and get this gag off already. Stiles just narrows his eyes, looking like the last thing he wants to do is put his fingers back in Derek’s mouth. But he blows out a resigned breath onto Derek’s face (smells like Sprite and a turkey sandwich) and tries again, pressing his thumbs against Derek’s chin for leverage to get the rope over Derek’s bottom lip.

“Where are they keeping Scott?” Stiles asks him as soon as Derek is free to talk.

Derek licks his lips, swallows. He can feel rope fibers tickling his throat, the wolfsbane burning just slightly. “Untie me first.”

Stiles’ lips, which had remained parted the entire time he’d been working on getting the gag out of Derek’s mouth, now open further as Stiles gets indignant again. “Dude, I’m not just gonna leave you all hogtied while I go get Scott, I’m not that much of a douchebag.”

Derek meets Stiles’ eyes and holds his gaze, a tactic which he’s figured out makes Stiles shifty and uncomfortable. “Untie me first, and then I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Stiles huffily moves behind Derek to work on freeing Derek’s hands and feet. “Why are they bothering to keep you captive, anyway? They’re werewolf hunters and you’re the alpha, I thought they’d be all about just straight up killing you.”

“Gee, thanks.” 

“Hey, I’m just stating the facts. Have they tried to interrogate you at all? Oh my god, have they been torturing you?”

“You’re the only one interrogating me,” Derek snaps. “But obviously they’ve been torturing me, what do you think Wolfsbane feels like?”

“All right, geez, I don’t get why you’re being such an asshole to someone who is actually in the middle of the act of rescuing you.” 

Derek wants to yell at Stiles that he’s short-tempered because in addition to getting wolfsbane poisoning, he also hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since before they caught him, and he has no idea how long ago that was. Also, he hasn’t been able to move or see or talk and really, Stiles is surprised that he’s not in a great mood? But then Stiles undoes the last knot and with the sudden absence of the tension keeping his arms back behind him, Derek falls forward. 

“Whoa there,” Stiles says helpfully. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Derek rolls onto his back, massaging feeling back into his wrists. He wishes that anyone but Stiles were here, or that it was just him alone in this room and he could take thirty seconds of silence to let himself start healing and get his bearings. But Stiles is still moving and talking, standing to look out door for more hunters, thinking out loud about his theories of why the hunters are doing what they’re doing.

“Could this be about the alpha pack? I mean, keeping you tied up as bait, that’s sort of like what Gerard did with your betas, so maybe they think that the alpha pack will come here to get you. But that doesn’t explain why they would take Scott, too.”

Derek sighs and pushes himself up to a sitting position. “I don’t know. Maybe they think that he’s an alpha, too.”

“People keep making that mistake, why is the idea that he just has loyal friends such a hard concept to grasp? So hey, where is he, you said you’d tell me.”

Derek rolls his eyes and stands, joining Stiles at the doorway. “Just keep quiet and follow me,” he says, feeling pretty certain that Stiles is going to quickly lose interest in doing either of those things.

***

"I just want to go on record as pointing out the creepiness of everything about you."

Derek would be able to hear Stiles coming in to the train station even if he had normal human hearing; Stiles is loud and clear, obviously announcing himself. Derek can hear Isaac's annoyed sigh a few steps behind him.

"You wouldn't think it was so creepy if it had worked," Isaac says. "You would be thanking me because you'd be able to take more than a step at a time without doubling over in pain."

"You would still be interfering with my body's natural system of alerting me to injury! My nervous system is just trying to be helpful and it feels very insulted by your creepy attempts to undercut it."

If Derek could get headaches, hearing the bickering between Stiles and Isaac would surely give him one. He reluctantly gets up from where he was sitting and reading and meets them at the entrance to his subway car. "You tried to take his pain away, didn't you?"

Isaac looks unharmed-he's probably already healed--but Stiles has a developing bruise covering his eye and roughly half of his face, and his lip is bleeding. From the way he's holding himself, Derek guesses that there are more bruises beneath his shirt. He smells resentful, angry, scared and very much in pain; of course, all that gets translated purely into sarcasm.

"Wait, are you telling me that this whole Pain Whisperer thing is actually a regular thing for you guys and not just Isaac being delusional?" Stiles shakes his head. _"Creepy."_

"Yeah, we can all do it, like I said," Isaac snaps. To Derek, he says "It didn't work on him, nothing happened."

"It doesn't work on humans. Only animals."

"What, why? Is it because of the great bond you have with all things fluffy?"

"No, it's because humans are sentient and conscious." Turning to Isaac, he adds, "Next time just knock him out first."

"Hey!" Stiles squawks. "Your minions don't need any more encouragement to assault me! -Wait, was that a joke? Your jokes are creepy and awful."

"Most werewolf jokes are." Derek has to bite his tongue to keep from goading Stiles further. There's just something so satisfying about making him scowl--he always makes the same face, nostrils flared and lips pressed together in a grumpy line. 

“Now that I’ve delivered your baby werewolf back to its mama, I think I’m gonna go home and nurse my wounds,” Stiles grumbles. He starts to leave, but Derek reaches out, grabs his shoulder, and immediately feels bad and drops it when Stiles flinches in pain.

“I have a first-aid kit in the back,” Derek says. “You shouldn’t drive without getting this taken care of first.”

Stiles follows him into the train car that Derek’s been using as his base, the least decrepit of all the rusting cars down here. Derek’s first-aid kit is actually pretty pathetic, probably because he lives with werewolves who never need it. But Stiles gratefully downs a couple of the pain killers and cleans up the cuts on his face; Derek would suggest an ice pack for the bruises, but he doesn’t have a refrigerator here, much less a freezer. 

He makes Isaac tell him what happened while Stiles cleans himself up. It’s surprisingly difficult to get it out of him, but not because he was doing anything dangerous; Isaac is just embarrassed. Apparently, he’d been on the way to his foster home when he’d been approached by a female werewolf who was attracted to him. From Isaac’s description, it sounds like she was a member of one of the largely-feral packs who live in the Eldorado National Forest, miles away from here.

And unfortunately, she hadn’t been alone. Isaac says he tried to turn her down as politely as he could, but she didn’t want to take no for an answer, and when he offended her the rest of her pack showed up and things got violent. Isaac had been outnumbered, and Stiles happened to be passing by in his Jeep.

Why Stiles stupidly got out of his Jeep and tried to help instead of just providing a swift getaway, Derek doesn’t understand. But he involved himself in the fracas, hence all the injuries, and now it’s Derek’s fun job to decide whether or not he needs to retaliate. Every instinct he has screams at him to not let this other pack leave town without answering for their attack, but he’s well aware of how weak his own pack is. And he doubts that Isaac would relish the thought of dealing with them again. He looks relieved that it’s over.

Derek doesn’t understand Isaac’s temper, how it sometimes flares up without warning and makes him vicious, and sometimes abandons him entirely. Too often Derek thinks he’s not angry enough at things that should make him furious.

“That other pack made me feel almost grateful for you guys,” Stiles says. “Terrible as you are, at least you don’t try to drag your dating prospects back to your cave.”

“Neither do 99% of werewolves,” Derek snaps. “This pack sounds like they’ve gone off the rails.”

“They were pretty bad,” Isaac says. “Look, I should go, my foster parents expected me home a while ago.”

The only good thing about Isaac’s foster parents is that they’re close--within easy walking distance of the train station. They’re uncaring yet still controlling, their house is overcrowded with far too many kids, and they already seem suspicious about how much time Isaac spends away from the house when he’s not in school. It’s only a matter of time before they start sniffing around the pack and either determine that Derek, Erica and Boyd aren’t good influences, or worse, put Isaac back into the system because they think he’s in a gang of some kind.

Derek was stuck in a foster home for a few months after his parents’ death, before Laura basically kidnapped him and got them both out of town. They were not the best months of his life, and he hates thinking of Isaac in that kind of situation. He knows he has to find a way to get Isaac out of there, preferably so that he can come live with Derek, but thinking about it makes him feel helpless: he has no idea what even his first step should be.

Struggling to get custody of a teenaged orphan was not part of Derek’s plan when he first decided he needed a pack.

After Isaac leaves, Stiles hangs around, still rummaging through the first-aid kit and bitching about how Derek doesn’t have anything he needs. The bruises on his face are starting to turn colors. 

“If this is so unhelpful, I can just take you to the emergency room,” Derek says, rolling his eyes.

Stiles scoffs. “I’m not going to the emergency room for a few bruises, please.”

“If you landed on your side when one of them threw you, like Isaac said, you might have broken ribs.”

“Nah, I know what those feel like. They didn’t break anything, I’m tougher than I look.” He finally pushes the kit away with a sigh. “Why couldn’t you, like, somehow magically feel that Isaac was in danger? I thought you guys could just detect that kind of thing when someone’s in your pack.”

Derek bristles defensively, but Stiles doesn’t look accusatory, just curious. He always wants to know more. “It’s kind of dependent on the other werewolf being close,” Derek says. “It’s... hard to explain.”

“Proximity-based. Not that hard to explain.” Stiles cracks a smile, then winces, like he forgot that doing anything with his lips is going to hurt right now. “Aren’t you going to thank me for saving his ass?”

That hadn’t occurred to Derek, but somehow it still annoys him that Stiles realizes it hadn’t occurred to him. “Thanks for almost getting yourself killed.”

“Didn’t Miss Manners teach you anything? You’re terrible. ‘Thank yous’ are so important and you can’t do them at all.”

Derek glares. He wants to just kick Stiles out, but there’s something light in Stiles’ tone, an absence of the meanness and mistrust that usually accompanies his sarcasm directed at Derek. Derek doesn’t want to ruin it. 

“Thanks for helping Isaac,” he says eventually. “But you can’t just involve yourself in werewolf fights like that. You really will get yourself killed.”

“It’s hard for me to take safety advice from the guy who manages to get himself gutted by something once a week,” Stiles says.

“That’s different. In case you haven’t noticed, I can heal, and you can’t.”

“My point still stands,” Stiles says loftily. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how do you, like, eat, now that you’re living here? Do you just always do takeout? Or have you somehow installed a stove in your train?”

“I can afford as much takeout as I want,” Derek says, shrugging. “It’s a lot more important that hunters don’t know where I am.”

Stiles continues to ask him weird, invasive questions about Derek’s current living situation and Derek’s life in general. Derek doesn’t know why he answers, considering that it’s none of Stiles’ business, but he does. Soon Stiles pulls out his phone to check the time, and grimaces.

“My odds of giving my dad a heart attack when he sees the sight of my face are slightly better if I’m not late for dinner. I’m gonna head.”

But as he’s walking back outside, he hesitates. “Are you going to try to get back at the wolves who attacked Isaac?”

Derek looks up, and lets his eyes flash red. “That’s not your concern.”

Stiles frowns. “Dude, you really shouldn’t. They were pretty intense, I mean seriously out for blood--”

“I said it’s not your concern.” Derek stands and steps forward. At this point he never expects his intimidation tactics to work on Stiles, but at least it’s enough for Stiles to drop the subject, his shoulders slumping.

“Whatever. See you the next time your betas need rescuing.” 

Derek rolls his eyes at Stiles’ retreating back. It doesn’t occur to him until later that Stiles never gave him a reason for why he lingered, and Derek never asked.

***

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Derek says. 

“I cannot believe that you’re the one tagging along with me for this. Here I am needing to believe in myself more than ever, and you could not possibly be helping me any less with that. You are, like, the anti-motivational speaker.”

Stiles is walking in front of him through the woods, purposefully kicking up brown leaves with every step he takes. His hands are shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, and he’s radiating anxiety so bad that the smell of it is starting to irritate Derek’s nose. 

“That’s not what I meant.” Obviously Stiles’ end of the spell will go fine; he got the mountain ash barrier to work that one time and this isn’t any different. It’s not like his willpower has decreased since then. “I just don’t know if their power source will actually be vulnerable enough to be destroyed, even without the faeries guarding it.”

“Well, if the combined strength of four werewolves and Lydia with a chemistry set can’t take it out, then really we’re fucked anyway. Seriously, I can’t believe you’re doubting the destructive capacity of the werewolves _you_ created—you’ve seen them on a full moon, right?” 

“Oh yeah, once or twice,” Derek says, rolling his eyes. Stiles rolls his eyes back and imitates Derek’s expression, the corners of his mouth pulled down. Derek knows that his face doesn’t look like that. 

“Plus, Deaton will be there to help with any magic stuff that’s needed. So they’ve got it covered, as long as I don’t screw everything up.”

Stiles swallows, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down, then blows out a long breath and bites at his bottom lip. Derek wants to grab him by the shoulders and make him be still for just a few seconds. Maybe he could scare the nervous tics out of him.

“So don’t screw it up,” Derek says, and shrugs when Stiles glares at him. It’s not really more complicated than that. Stiles just has to concentrate on the spell, which will draw all the faeries away from their stronghold and towards the person doing the spell. Derek’s job will be to protect Stiles from a horde of these creatures that he doesn’t actually have any way to kill until the others destroy the power source and make them mortal again. 

Derek still can’t believe that Stiles actually agreed to a plan that involves luring danger to him and then relying only on Derek to keep him alive. Stiles usually has a better sense of self-preservation. Then again, the sheriff is one of the many adults that the faeries have under their thrall; he’d probably agree to any plan that had a slight possibility of working.

Stiles’ phone vibrates, and every motion that Stiles makes to get his phone out of his pocket is exaggerated, bigger than it needs to be. The text is from Scott. “They’re in position. Fuck, um, okay, I guess we can just do the spell here?”

Derek looks around. The clearing they’ve walked into is as defensible as anywhere else in the forest—which is to say, not very. He sighs. “Sure.”

“Jesus, could you at least pretend to have some faith in my abilities? Or you know, I don’t even need faith, I’d settle for like—agnosticism. Can you at least be agnostic about this?”

Derek blinks at him. “You’re not a god.”

Stiles rolls his eyes as he swings his backpack to the forest floor, already unzipping it and taking out the few supplies that they need. “No kidding, brain trust. What I’m saying is that I will settle for any emotion from you right now other than abject, pessimistic despair. I don’t feel like that’s a lot to ask.”

“I never said I despaired.” Derek doesn’t know how Stiles always does this every time they have to work together: he gets Derek caught up in these ridiculous, circular conversations and Derek finds himself arguing over inconsequential things that he doesn’t actually feel that strongly about. It’s like Stiles has an innate ability to bring Derek down to his level of immaturity. 

“Yeah, but your whole demeanor radiates despair. If Despair were a cologne, it would smell like you.” Stiles sits down Indian-style on the ground and unscrews the lid to the magic powder, fiddling with it. 

“No it wouldn’t,” Derek says, feeling unreasonably offended. “I actually know what despair smells like, remember? Anyway, you smell like anxiety and Doritos.”

Stiles barks out an unamused laugh, but when he looks up at Derek, his eyes are full of uncertainty and devoid of sarcasm. It’s unexpected and makes Derek bite back the next sarcastic thing he might have said.

“You can do this,” he says. “I wouldn’t have agreed to come out of here if I didn’t think this part of the plan would work.”

Stiles snorts. “You just think that it will ultimately result in us getting maimed horribly and then enslaved by the faeries forever.”

Derek shrugs. “Yes.”

“Well good then, that makes me feel much better.” Stiles licks his lips and rubs his hands together, a steely look crossing over his face. “Showtime, or something.”

Derek moves away to give him space, and Stiles starts pouring out the dust in a circle around himself, his eyes closed, his lips parted. Derek listens to the air whistling past Stiles’ teeth and his heartbeat, slowing down, becoming steady.

***

“This is dumb,” Stiles says, chewing on a hangnail. “I can look after my dad just fine by myself.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Derek says. “What exactly are you going to do if he turns into a yellow-eyed maniac with claws and super-strength?”

“Hey, we don’t know if that’ll actually happen. Personally I think this is all just a misunderstanding, a false alarm if you will, and you’re going to end up holed up in my room all night waiting for nothing and it’s going to be so boring that you’ll want to stab your eyes out with your werewolf claws, and then you’ll probably get mad at me like the boredom is _my_ fault.” Stiles takes a comically deep breath, his chest puffing out. “So you should just leave now and thank me later for helping you to avoid death by boredom.”

Derek can hear Sheriff Stilinski downstairs, finishing up the dishes from dinner and putting the leftovers in tupperware. Derek has been here for fifteen minutes, and everything seems normal so far—no heightened heart rate or inexplicable smell of cooking meat, which had accompanied all the other cases they’ve seen. Then again, those signs never seem to show up until immediately before the transformation takes place, so their lack doesn’t mean anything.

Derek leans further back in Stiles’ desk chair and crosses his arms over his chest. “The only thing we know about this—virus or spell or whatever is that it’s passed on through physical contact. And your dad brought in the last known victim to the police station himself.”

“So what about the other cops who handled that dude, huh? It wasn’t just my dad.”

“Erica, Isaac, Boyd and Scott are at the houses of the other cops that were involved.” Derek doesn’t point out that there’s no way they can realistically protect all of the people working in the police station today, or all those who may have had contact with the rabid not-a-real-werewolf (Stiles has been calling them “faux-wolves”; Derek is working hard not to let that word infiltrate his own vocabulary). They’re taking care of who they can, and Derek is here because he’s the strongest, and they’ve prioritized keeping the sheriff alive and unharmed over any of the other possible victims of this thing. You would think that Stiles would be pleased about this, but instead he’s being difficult.

“Well, then don’t you think you should go provide backup? Because no offense, but your betas are all still kinda slow, and the faux-wolves seem to be super badasses right out of the gate up until they faint and go back to being humans. Aren’t you worried about your pack?”

“Stiles. I’m here to protect your father, not take him out.”

Stiles stops fidgeting and looks Derek in the eye. “That’s very sweet of you to say that, but your track record with mercy kind of blows chunks.”

Blows chunks? Really? Derek wants to retort but it’s not like he’s going to change Stiles’ mind on this one. “I’m not going to hurt him, no matter what he turns into. But you don’t have to believe me. If you kick me out I’ll just keep watch from outside all night.”

“Oh my god, you saying shit like that is so not helping!” Stiles gapes and flails and looks like he’s only a few more hysterical hand motions away from deciding that the best course of action is to try to knock Derek out somehow. Derek shouldn’t have goaded him. 

“Look.” Derek stands up, but stops moving forward when Stiles tenses up. He sighs. “If your dad does turn into a werewolf for the night, I’m the best chance he has of getting out of this without hurting himself or anyone else.” 

From the look on Stiles’ face, he looks much less concerned about the ‘anyone else’ in the equation than he is about his dad. “Just—you can’t treat him like he’s a monster, okay? No matter what he turns into, he’s still a regular old fragile human underneath. You can’t expect that he’ll magically heal from anything you throw at him.”

They do actually have a lot of evidence suggesting that these temporary wolves have healing powers right up until they shift back to human, but Derek isn’t going to point that out right now. “We still don’t even know that he’ll turn. Like you said, this could be a false alarm.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No.”

Stiles laughs and stretches his arms behind his head, lacing his fingers over the back of his skull. “But you pretended to be optimistic for like five seconds to try and stop me from fretting, that’s almost sweet.”

“Shut up.” What the hell, what other teenaged boy sincerely uses the word ‘fretting’ in a sentence?

“Nah, you don’t really mean that.” Stiles gives him a lopsided grin and then pushes past him to steal Derek’s seat at the desk, pulling open his laptop. “I was gonna spend my time waiting for my dad to turn into a horrible monster doing research. Can you think of any other characteristics of the faux-wolves that you haven’t already told me?”

Derek swallows his annoyance at the ‘horrible monster’ crack; he knows that Stiles doesn’t actually think of werewolves that way anymore, so he doesn’t know why he has to make digs like that. “Have I mentioned the drool?”

“I believe that when it’s coming from rabid werewolves, the technical term is ‘slaver.’” Stiles is already typing, his hands skittering across the keyboard in a rhythm that is annoyingly inconsistent. He bites his lip and narrows his eyes while skimming his Google hits, and Derek goes to the edge of the bed for lack of anywhere else to sit. 

“Is there any pattern to the violence when they turn and go all bonkers? Like how Scott totally tried to go after Jackson on that one full moon because he was pissed at him?”

“I can’t really know the personal history between the faux—between the temporary werewolves and every person they attack. But it seems pretty random to me. They just seem to go after whoever’s closest.”

Stiles nods to himself. “Proximity. What about their senses?”

“How would I know how well they can smell and hear?” 

“I don’t know, detective skills? Which I realize you don’t have, like, at _all_ , so maybe—“

“They didn’t react to noises that were on the very edge of my hearing range,” Derek snaps, folding his arms defensively again. “So I think their hearing isn’t quite on par with a normal werewolf’s, but it’s definitely better than a human’s.”

“Would you look at that, a deduction.” Stiles smirks at him and Derek digs his fingers into his forearms to try and tamp down the urge to strangle. “And their sense of smell?”

Derek shrugs angrily and doesn’t say anything.

“And you were being so helpful there for a second,” Stiles mutters. 

Derek is not going to bother defending himself—how would he have any idea how well the non-werewolves smell, seriously?—and this conversation is stupid. The sheriff seems to have settled down in his office by now; Derek can hear him shuffling papers. The sound of Stiles’ fingers typing is the loudest thing in the room.

***

“This is dangerous and unnecessary,” Derek says for the twentieth time.

“If you were really going to put your foot down against it, we wouldn’t be here right now.” Erica gives him a smile that’s both bright and predatory and continues flipping through a circular rack of party dresses. She hasn’t seemed to like any of them so far. Derek is worried that she’s going to force him to take her to a second department store.

“It will be crowded, it’s the night before the full moon, and you might experience heightened emotions. What if you shift in the middle of the dance floor?”

“Oh wow, you’re afraid that I’m going to lose control and wolf out when some guy asks me to dance, aren’t you?” She laughs, and Derek glares. “Geez, give me some credit, I’m smoother than that. And anyway, Boyd is my date, so we’ll keep an eye on each other.”

“The stakes are still too high,” Derek says, but mostly to himself—as Erica pointed out, this is an argument he’s already lost. He’s been trying to go easier on his pack since he got them back from the Alpha Pack, and Erica seems to have figured out how to take advantage of the leniency and guilt. He glares at the back of her head as she leans further into the clothing rack, having spotted something she likes.

“This has promise.” The dress is black and short, with emphatic shoulders and a low-cut bust. Erica will look fantastic, if quite scandalous, in it. Derek still isn’t sure if she shows off her new body because she honestly enjoys it, or because she feels like she’s supposed to—because she thinks it’s part of what makes her strong.

Derek gets it: appearance can be an important tool. But he hopes that she’s enjoying herself at the same time.

“It’s nice,” he says, and Erica looks at him like he’s just said something funny. He’s sure that part of the reason she wanted him to come was because he’s so very out of his element in the mall. “I could buy it for you, if you want.”

“Uh, I haven’t even tried it on yet. And plus I have my own money. Are you trying to be my sugar daddy or something?” Erica laughs and bats her eyelashes at him.

Derek sighs and busies himself with sorting through a rack of skirts at his right. At this point he’s gotten very good at ignoring it when Erica flirts with him—he knows she only does it to test the boundaries. “It’s an alpha thing, not a gender thing.”

“What, you mean it’s traditional for alpha wolves to buy formalwear for their betas?”

Derek puts enough red into his glare that Erica bows her head after meeting his eyes. “It’s traditional for the alpha to provide, especially for things that are...” Especially for ceremonies, things that the pack-members cherish as significant and sentimental events: weddings, baby showers, graduations. He’s not sure if high school dances qualify or not. “Never mind. I just thought I’d offer.”

Erica snorts, and moves on to another clothing rack—this one is not marked as ‘Clearance,’ and is full of the expensive, name brand clothes that adorn the mannequins, the stuff that the store really wants you to buy. “Well, if you’re buying, then I’m going big.” 

Derek doesn’t bother to give a token protest, just trails behind her as she heads deeper into the sea of satin and tulle. They come out the other end laden down with enough dresses to outfit a sizable bridal party, and Erica’s trying to be cool, but Derek can smell the excitement. Maybe she’ll remember this the next time a threat makes her want to leave the pack.

Stiles runs into them—very nearly literally, he comes bursting out of a display of belts while looking down at his phone, in complete ignorance of every aspect of his immediate environment—while Erica is in the dressing room and Derek is outside. Someone’s grandma is sitting in the only chair outside the dressing room, so Derek is standing, flipping idly through a rack of nightgowns because it beats staring at the wall.

“’Scuse me—oh, it’s you. Wait, what are _you_ doing here?” Stiles makes it seem like a big deal to stop moving, his shirt fluttering out and his chest jerking back as he comes to a halt. His eyes flick down to Derek’s hands and back up to his face. “Why are you looking at lingerie?”

Derek pulls his hand back and shoves both hands in his jacket pockets. “I’m not.” 

“Sure you’re not.” A slow, lopsided smile spreads across Stiles’ face; Derek wants to tell him that it looks idiotic. “I can’t believe I’m running into you, of all people or wolves, in the women’s section of Macy’s. This is a very surreal moment. I feel like I need to snap a picture of you holding up that bra to commemorate it.” 

“I’m here with Erica,” Derek snaps. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“The seasons are changing and I need to adapt.” Stiles holds up a pair of shorts and a pair of swim trunks, waving them triumphantly. “See, when I’m going shopping for myself, I can own it, I don’t need to make up an imaginary shopping partner for an excuse.”

“Do you _really_ think I’m going shopping for myself?” Derek asks, and Stiles opens his mouth to make some aggravating reply, but no sound comes out and his mouth just hangs open like that. Something is happening behind Derek’s shoulder.

“I think this one’s my favorite, but I need a second opinion. Oh, hi, Stiles.” Erica struts into view and twirls to show off what she’s wearing. “What do you think?”

The dress is a deep royal blue, and although the skirt is long, it’s mostly transparent, with a floor-length see-through layer over a tiny miniskirt. The top has slightly puffed shoulders, no sleeves, and a bodice which makes all the other dresses Erica chose look modest. 

To Stiles’ credit, he recovers almost immediately. “It’s perfect, if you’re looking to seduce Henry VIII.”

Erica bares her teeth at him in a terrifying smile. “I think Anne Boleyn is very misunderstood.”

Stiles nods several times. “Yeah, actually, I should have picked a more violent historical character. Bloody Mary, maybe.”

Erica laughs, not her real laugh; Stiles is her number one favorite person to perform for. “Oh come on, the car battery thing was ages ago, are you really still holding that against me?”

“Yeah, four months is a real lifetime. If you’re a butterfly, maybe.”

“Actually, some butterflies can live up to a whole year,” Derek says. This gets him a melodramatic, open-mouthed stare. “What? Stiles, I probably took the exact same freshman biology class that you did.”

Stiles looks like he can’t imagine this, or doesn’t want to. He turns back to Erica. “So, wait, this means you’re going to prom, right? Are you two going together?”

“Why on Earth would I be going to prom,” Derek says, at the same time that Erica says “No dumbass, I’m going with Boyd.” Stiles throws up his hands in defense.

“Hey, you guys are the ones shopping together, sorry for assuming.” His gaze flicks back and forth between the two of them, and Derek can’t quite read his expression. Despite the flirting, there’s definitely an edge to his sarcastic cracks--he hasn’t forgotten Erica hitting him with his car battery, and running into her and Derek together when he wasn’t expecting to makes him uncomfortable. And yet he’s sticking around, trading jabs with Erica. Derek guesses that the dress has a lot to do with it. 

“But it’s kinda weird that you’re going to the dance at all,” Stiles says, and Derek hears a small jump in Erica’s heartbeat—her expression doesn’t change. “A, because the last big dance our school had was an unqualified disaster in every way, for both humans _and_ werewolves, and B, because I thought you and Boyd were all too cool for school.”

“It’s just one stupid dance,” Erica says, and Stiles just blathers on even though Derek is glaring at him.

“Yeah, but it’s crazy! I feel like I’m gonna turn around and you’ll be attending pep rallies next, and then who knows? Class president?”

Derek can smell that Erica wants to smack Stiles down, but she’s getting better at reining in her instincts: she just says “Whatever” and gives him a condescending hair toss before heading back inside the fitting room.

“Our school government could use more werewolf representation!” Stiles calls out after her, then yelps and cringes as Derek grabs his bicep and drags him away. “Jesus Christ, what’d I--?”

“You’re yelling about werewolves in the middle of the mall,” Derek growls in his ear. There are no nearby walls to push Stiles against, so he’s made do with pushing him against a clothing rack, which doesn’t work as well—Stiles gets tangled in the hangers.

“Oh come on, no one heard me.”

“And her going to the dance is none of your business.” Derek feels foolish the second the words are out of his mouth, can imagine how foolish he must look to Stiles—blustering, sensitive, over-protective of someone who shouldn’t need it because she could flatten Stiles without breaking a sweat. 

Stiles hunches his shoulders and retreats further into the clothing rack. “Excuse me for commenting on the obvious weirdness of the fact that two months ago, she was a runaway, and now she wants to be prom queen.”

“None of your business,” Derek says again. He abruptly realizes that he’s leaning in and stops. He doesn’t need to be so angry, not about this, not in the middle of a mall with humans on all sides and Erica in the fitting room. 

“Christ, point taken. Lower your hackles already.” Stiles’ scent has gone faintly sour, like he’s not quite getting what he wants. He shoulders past Derek into the aisle between clothing racks, but then turns around, his movements jerky and indecisive. “I’m just curious, are you an asshole like professionally? Like, do you actually get paid to be grumpy and rude in every conversation, and that’s why you don’t seem to have a day-job?”

“Do you get paid to never shut up?” 

“Hey, come on, that was a serious question! If I knew for sure that you’re systematically dedicated to being a jerk, I could just smack myself in the face instead of starting a conversation with you, like, ever!” Stiles gestures expansively and laughs through his words, getting caught up in his own cleverness. 

“You could. I’ve never asked you to talk to me,” Derek says. It earns him a glare, which he returns. 

“True, but it’s polite to talk to the dude whose ass you keep saving.”

Derek is about to tell Stiles that he has a very selective memory about who’s been saving who lately when Erica finally steps out of the fitting room, the blue dress draped over her forearm. “Now I just need shoes and accessories, and we can go.”

“And that is my cue to escape back to menswear,” Stiles says. “Erica, I’ll see you at school, and Derek, I’ll probably see you at school too since it’s your favorite place to lurk.” He gives them a funny, awkward little salute which Derek doesn’t understand and leaves.

Erica smirks. “I could hear you guys from the fitting room. It sounded like a sitcom. Terrible comebacks, both of you.”

“Why don’t we skip the shoes? I think your leopard-print heels will go great with that dress.” Derek starts walking briskly towards the cash register and Erica hurries behind him, grabbing his forearm.

“All right all right, your Odd Couple routine is off-limits, duly noted,” she grumbles. “I know that you know leopard-print will not go with this.”

Derek lets himself be steered towards Women’s Shoes, and elects to ignore the Odd Couple comment. He can get back at her during training.

***

“We’re not playing Twenty Questions.”

“Aw man, come on.” Derek can both hear and feel, against his back, Stiles’ overdramatic sigh. “You are my least favorite person to be helplessly endangered and stuck with, and you have some really fierce competition.”

Derek doesn’t bother pointing out that of the two of them, he’s the only one with a painful electric current running through him, but he doubts that that would get Stiles to leave him alone. They’re sitting on the ground in some anonymous cell, back to back, wrists duct-taped together. Derek is having terrible flashbacks to when they were paralyzed on the floor of the police station. Stiles had insisted on playing I Spy even though Derek spent the whole time threatening his life instead of participating in the game.

For a few seconds, Stiles is quiet, and Derek lets himself hope that maybe this is the secret to dealing with him: ignore Stiles hard enough, and he’ll lose interest in bothering you and shut up. But then Stiles starts tapping his toes on the cement floor, and the sound bangs around Derek’s skull on an infinite loop.

“Stop that.”

Stiles stops tapping his foot. “Fine. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon—“

“No.”

“I didn’t ask you to play, asshole. I mean, you’re welcome to join in but I doubt that you’ve ever seen a movie, so it might not be the best game for you. Okay, Zac Efron and Jeff Daniels...”

When Scott and Derek’s pack finally show up to rescue them, the first thing Derek does is rip the duct tape off his wrists and slap it over Stiles’ lips. Most of the tackiness is gone, so he has to practically shove it into Stiles’ mouth for it to be at all effective, and Stiles of course rips it off a second later. But it’s still satisfying.  
***

“Have I mentioned that this is gross and weird? Because it’s gross and weird and I feel weird about it.” Stiles is stalling in the doorway to Scott’s bedroom, drumming his fingers on the doorjamb. 

“Mrs. McCall let us in,” Derek points out. It’s not like they’re here illicitly.

“Yeah, but I’m still going into my best friend’s bedroom while he’s not here to look for something with his DNA still on it. It’s just creepy—for me I mean, I get that it’s par for the course for you.”

Derek glares at the back of Stiles’ head and gives his back a shove so that he stumbles into the room. “We don’t have all night. Scott could wake up any minute now.”

“Right. Um...”

Stiles just stands there, looking weirdly hesitant. Derek rolls his eyes. He’d hoped that Stiles wouldn’t be quite this squeamish. Scott’s his best friend, after all, and it’s just dirty laundry. 

“Here.” Derek grabs an undershirt off the top of Scott’s laundry pile—it smells like grass, the locker room, and close encounters with other sweaty boys, so it’s probably what he wore the last time he played lacrosse. It’s drenched in DNA. “Can we make this potion now?”

Stiles works fast now that Derek’s not asking him to touch any of Scott’s dirty clothes. He sits on the floor and retrieves the large glass bowl and the various vials of powder from his backpack, along with the printout of the spell that Deaton gave him. Derek is pretty sure that this is the most complex spell that Stiles has tried. Which makes sense: they’re trying to remove a whole other personality that’s been grafted onto Scott and bring back his old memories. Seems like it should be pretty complex.

Stiles folds the sweaty shirt at the bottom of the bowl and then carefully pours his bottle of water (some kind of special enchanted water, apparently) over it, then starts adding the powders, all with his eyes closed. There aren’t any words to the spell—Derek always imagined that magic required a lot of reciting things in foreign languages, but apparently it’s just about willpower and focusing your mind. 

Eventually, Stiles says “Okay, now” and Derek offers up his wrist. Stiles holds it lightly and swallows, looking only slightly less freaked out than he did when Derek asked him to cut his arm off.

“I’ll heal from this. It’ll be fine,” Derek says.

“Yeah, I know. It’s just—it’s a lot of blood to give, and—“

“It’s for Scott.” Stiles looks up to meet Derek’s eyes briefly, then looks back down at their hands and nods. 

He has Derek rest his forearm on top of a large measuring cup, and takes out the razor, but hesitates again. 

“I looked up where to make the cut on the wrist so that you won’t bleed to death, I mean you’ll bleed a _lot_ but there’s no risk that you’ll die, okay?”

Derek snorts. “There’d be no risk of that no matter how you slit my wrist.”

Stiles makes a face. “I see we’re hilarious today.” He takes a deep breath and his eyebrows furrow, and Derek can see the moment when he starts concentrating hard on the object of the spell. Then he slices into Derek’s skin and the blood starts dripping. 

The cut tries to heal immediately, so Stiles has to saw back and forth to keep it open. It hurts, but not compared to any of the other ways he’s been injured recently. When the blood reaches the ‘1 cup’ line, Stiles stops, and Derek takes his wrist back. He feels a little dizzy, light-headed. Even werewolf-healing can’t make up for blood loss right away.

Stiles pours in the blood, which is the last of the ingredients. He stirs everything together with his fingers (Derek wonders if he’s thinking that it’s gross, all that blood), making the shirt swirl around in the liquid. Eventually he stops; it all looks pretty well mixed together to Derek.

“Um, okay then,” Stiles says. “I guess we put some plastic-wrap over this and take it to Scott.”

They take the bowl of blood and sweat and magic dust to the kitchen, and Stiles knows exactly where the McCalls keep their plastic wrap, and uses at least three times the amount that’s probably necessary to prevent spillage. Stiles drove them here, and it will be Derek’s job to sit in the passenger seat of the Jeep with the bowl and keep the sloshing to a minimum. 

There is a whooshing feeling between Derek’s ears that feels more extreme when he stands and tries to move quickly. He’s pretty sure that the only time he’s ever lost this much blood at once was when Peter gutted him from behind outside of the high school, and he was unconscious while his body healed from that. He can’t be unconscious now.

After he finishes wrapping the bowl, Stiles just stands there for a moment, drumming his fingers on the counter and frowning, anxious again, indecisive again.

“We need to go.” Derek can hear the gruff impatience in his own voice, but he’s trying not to pass out; he’s allowed.

Stiles shoots him an annoyed look. “Yep, sorry for being freaked about my best friend. Come on.” He shoves the bowl into Derek’s hands and pushes past him to head to the front door, and Derek does his best to stride forward like he’s not queasy.

Stiles is quiet for almost the entire trip back to the clinic, which Derek finds disconcerting but certainly not unwelcome. His recovery from the blood loss is picking up speed and he feels almost normal, though quite hungry. 

“Well, here we go, let’s see if Stiles did the spell right and can possibly save his friend,” Stiles says in a fake-cheery voice when they arrive. Derek snorts, and Stiles looks at him, a crease between his eyebrows.

“I realize you’re not one for hand-holding, but like, you saw me do the spell and you heard Deaton’s instructions, you think I did it right, right? You don’t think I missed anything or fucked it up somehow?”

Of course Stiles hasn’t fucked it up, because Stiles never fucks up at times like these, never makes the wrong call under stress and gets someone hurt because of it. Derek feels a wave of anger and resentment surge up in his belly, all the stronger because it’s totally irrational. 

“We don’t have time for your insecurities,” Derek snaps, or maybe it’s a yell, he can admit that his voice is almost at shouting volume. “We have to get this to Scott, there’s no time to coddle you.”

Stiles’ mouth drops open and his jaw works for half a second before he explodes, spitting so many words out in one furious rush of air. “God, you are the biggest fucking dickhead, fine, fine let’s fucking go already, because I really forgot all about the danger Scott’s in for a second, definitely needed a reminder there!” 

Stiles pushes open the Jeep’s door and grabs the bowl from Derek’s lap, yanking it out of Derek’s hands and shoving himself out of the car in jerky motions. Derek gets out of the Jeep a second behind him, and he knows he should apologize, which just makes him angrier. He tries to keep a lid on it, because this isn’t what they should be doing right now, he needs to stay focused in case this doesn’t work and he has to knock Scott unconscious again.

“We just don’t have time for niceties right now,” he says, and Stiles laughs at him.

“Yeah, you pretty much never have time to be a decent human being. I know your schedule’s so tight, what with not having a job and all.” 

Derek grits his teeth. “Your potion either works or it doesn’t, and that doesn’t really depend on me being nice and holding your hand.”

Stiles stops walking, and Derek almost runs into his back. Stiles turns around, facing Derek now, the big bowl of muck sticking out between them in a way that strikes Derek as oddly funny. “Right. If the plan depended on that, we’d definitely be fucked. I mean, most of our plans that depend on you end up fucked.”

Derek tries to laugh; it comes out as a tense huff of air. “At least I don’t ask you to be my therapist about it.”

Stiles starts to say something, Derek can see the flash of his teeth pressing into his bottom lip, about to spit out a consonant—probably the start of ‘fuck you’—and Derek puts both of his hands on either side of Stiles’ face and leans in forward fast to kiss him. 

It ends almost as soon as Derek realizes what he’s doing. Stiles makes an abortive movement to turn his mouth away, and Derek lets go and takes a step back, then another. Stiles, of course, is the first one to recover from the shock enough to speak.   
“What the—dude, what the hell? What was that?” He’s blinking rapidly and shaking his head, not ‘no,’ but like he needs to clear it, the way you do when you’ve stared at a painful light for too long. Derek is sure that the gaping-fish expression on his own face must be hilarious.

“Seriously, talk about coming out of freaking _nowhere_ , I mean—I still feel mad at you but you also just kissed me and ugh, it makes my head hurt, I think my brain can’t process this.” 

Stiles presses his fingers to his temple and squints at Derek, overdoing it and talking too much as usual, it’s aggravating. Derek stares at him and notices the flex of tendons in Stiles’ neck, the shadow cast by his jawline, the moles on his cheek. He catches himself staring.

He turns around and walks away. He manages not to run, but he walks quickly. Stiles calls out after him, then really yells when it becomes apparent that Derek isn’t stopping, but Derek doesn’t respond, and starts to run as soon as he’s around the corner.

Why did he do that? He’s never thought about Stiles that way, never considered kissing Stiles a possibility. It doesn’t make sense. Derek dislikes Stiles, and the feeling is clearly mutual. Stiles is not in his pack, and every time they’re forced to spend any time together, Stiles annoys him to a degree that none of the other teenagers can hope to match. Stiles aggravates him, gets on his last nerve—

And gets under his skin. Derek wants to laugh and then cry at how oblivious, how _stupid_ he’s been. If Laura were here, she’d tease him for being so repressed. But she’d also understand why he’s repressed, why he can’t just go around kissing people, why it’s dangerous. Jesus, he’s disgusted with himself. He feels betrayed by his own hands and mouth. It makes him worry about his self-control in other areas: maybe he needs to start locking himself up on full moons if he can’t keep himself from kissing teenagers.

Because that’s one more thing making this terrible: Stiles is, of course, sixteen. Derek’s age when Kate found him, and fuck, what if that’s part of the attraction? The hyperactive, excitable manner that Stiles has, the way he describes things as “awesome” and “badass”—he can be immature and boyish, sometimes. Boyish because he is a boy, and has Derek been subconsciously attracted to him despite of that quality, or because of it? Oh god, Derek is worse than Kate, he’s a pedophile.

Derek is almost to the point of turning himself in to the police on the basis of one kiss when he remembers: Scott. He runs back to the clinic as fast as he can, seeing visions of the potion failing, of Scott tearing through Derek’s pack and then attacking Stiles, Lydia, Allison, even Deaton. He left them vulnerable because he was freaking out about one idiotic kiss. If anyone has been hurt, it’s on his head. 

He races back to the clinic and stops a few yards away from the door, listening. He can hear Allison’s laughter, Stiles’ relieved and hyper chattering, and Scott’s voice, shaky and confused but friendly. He sounds like himself, and as Derek listens further, he can hear footsteps moving around, Scott’s footsteps, which means he’s untied. It must have worked. Derek lets himself breathe again, and leaves before any of his pack are able to identify his scent or the sound of his heartbeat.   
He spends the rest of the night pacing around the woods and the walls of his house, going back over the past six months in his mind, trying to pinpoint the instance when his feelings toward Stiles changed from indifference to... whatever they are now. He catches himself going down the train of thought of wondering if his behavior has changed and if Stiles has noticed, which is a pointless and stupid question, considering that Stiles definitely knows after tonight.

The questions floating through his mind about Stiles prevent him from falling asleep until the sun is almost up. Insomnia is common for him, but it’s not until he wakes up in the morning that he realizes that this is the first time since Laura’s death that the thoughts keeping him from sleep haven’t been about threats to his life or memories soaked in guilt. 

He’s not sure what to make of that. Mostly it just makes him uncomfortable.

***

“So what was with the disappearing act yesterday?” 

Boyd’s the one asking the question, but all three of his betas are waiting for an answer. He has been trying to re-gain their trust over the past few months, and he supposes that this is what he gets for it: they want him to be reliable, they want to know why when he disappears. Derek dislikes it.

“I picked up some signs that the witches had come back and were going for the house. I had to leave to investigate.” 

“Really,” Boyd says with an eyebrow raise. Derek stands a little taller, and Isaac says, “Are they still around? Is everything okay?”

At least one of his betas still automatically believes the stuff Derek says. “It was a false alarm,” he says, and glares at Erica when she snorts.

“Stiles just says you left really abruptly. He seemed pissed,” Erica says. Derek finds it impossible to interpret the tone of her voice—did Stiles tell them what happened, and now they’re just grilling him for fun when they know the truth? The thought makes beads of sweat prickle on his neck.

“I gave him my blood for the spell. That’s what he needed.” Derek tries to convey with his tone that the conversation is over, no more questions, and he feels like only half-works: Erica and Boyd don’t press him with more questions, but they still look plenty skeptical.

“So are there more witches around? Or are we good?” Boyd says.

“We’re good, everything’s safe.” Saying that out loud gives him a spike of superstitious dread, so he adds “For now.” 

“Well, the spell worked. Scott’s himself again,” Boyd says. “Deaton still doesn’t know how the witches spelled him in the first place, though.”

“I know. I went back later to check on him.” Boyd blinks at him, and Derek realizes that his pack assumed that he’d just wandered off without knowing or caring about Scott’s ultimate fate. Great.

“So that’s it? It’s over, they’re gone?” Isaac sounds relieved and hopeful, and Derek feels a flash of guilt, as if the witches really could have come back last night and he could have missed it because he was too busy having a personal crisis.

“For now, but we can’t let anyone with magic catch us off-guard like that again. We need a way to figure out how to strengthen our defenses against things we’re vulnerable to.”

“Things like magic,” Boyd says. “Couldn’t we ask Deaton about that? Seems like that’s kind of his forté.”

“I’m not sure how much we can trust him.” Derek notices the reactions that they all try to hide: Isaac bites his lip, Erica suppresses an eye roll, and Boyd breathes out hard through his nose. They don’t understand why he’s so slow to trust—really, they never have—and they’re growing impatient with him. He wants to shake them until they understand, and has to remind himself that they’re never going to understand why they need to be so careful until it’s too late. They haven’t lived his life, and they don’t get it. It’s useless to keep expecting them to.

“We can find other ways to be stronger,” is all he says. They don’t ask what he means by that, which is good, because he doesn’t have an answer yet.

Stiles texts him later that afternoon. _So uh is there something we should talk about?_

Derek doesn’t know why Stiles bothered to put ‘uh’ into a text. Seems pointless. For a second he thinks about replying say this, but of course that would open up a path of communication, which he doesn’t want. He leaves his phone in one of the train cars that he doesn’t sleep in and tries hard to forget it’s there for the rest of the day. 

When he checks it the next morning, Stiles hasn’t sent any more messages. Which means that Stiles has taken the hint and won’t be bugging him any more about this, which is good. Derek feels only relief, nothing else.

***

A week passes before he sees Stiles again. It hasn’t been the easiest of weeks; Derek has been distracted, jumpy, and angry at himself for thinking about Stiles even when Stiles isn’t around. When he first met Kate, he spent all his time daydreaming about her and hoped to somehow run into her everywhere he went. It’s not like that now: if he imagines running into Stiles somewhere, he feels mortified and almost nauseous. And there are no daydreams, just spikes of annoyance whenever he remembers something that Stiles has said or done. 

Stiles has somehow, completely against Derek’s will, worked himself into Derek’s thoughts to a truly horrifying degree. And Derek doesn’t know how to make it stop.

On Friday, he’s cutting through the parking lots to the side of the high school after a meeting with his betas at the bleachers when he sees Stiles fly through the air and land on his back on the asphalt. Without thinking, Derek shouts Stiles’ name and gets to his side, crouching down and clutching Stiles’ shoulder. He’s looking around for the threat when Stiles starts laughing.

“Whoa, dude, what are you doing here? Ow, ow my ass.” Stiles cringes and arches up and touches his lower back gingerly. He doesn’t actually seem injured. 

“What are you—what’s going on?”

“Holy shit! Are you okay?” Scott jogs up next to them, and Derek takes his hand off Stiles’ shoulder.

“Yeah, my ass is just bruised.” Stiles sits up carefully, wincing, and looks back to Derek. “We were just practicing. I tried to make a protective circle, but instead of keeping Scott out when he ran at me, it like, flung me out of the way or something.”

“It was pretty hilarious,” Scott says, grinning. “But only if you’re not hurt,” he adds when Stiles gives him a dirty look. “If you’re seriously hurt then it totally did not look funny at all.”

“Dick,” Stiles says, without venom. He glances back at Derek again, face unreadable, and Derek feels his neck start to sweat. “Really though, what are you doing here? You just, like, appeared.”

“I was talking to my pack.” Derek stands up and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “You should be more careful. You could have hit your head.” 

Stiles glances back at the concrete curb two feet behind him and shrugs, because he’s teenaged and invincible. “It’s cool. Pretty sure I know what to fix so that the circle works the way it’s supposed to.”

“And you don’t have a better way to test it?” Derek shakes his head. “You’re also doing this right out in the open, are you nuts?”

“Oh, because there’s so many people out?” Stiles stands up and gestures at the empty lot. “All our classmates are eating in the cafeteria or on the lacrosse field.”

“And are they _confined_ to the cafeteria or the lacrosse field? Is there anything at all keeping them from coming out here? What about your teachers?”

Stiles nods and his fingers coming up to rub at his jaw in mock seriousness. “Right, right. Hey, have you thought about getting that stick surgically removed from your ass? I mean, there’s got to be a surgeon for werewolves out there somewhere, maybe Deaton knows a guy.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Derek can see Scott trying to subtly walk backwards and out of the conversation. Derek needs to extricate himself from this before it escalates and ends the same way their last argument did. Not that he’s going to let himself do that again.

“Fine. It’s your funeral.” Derek turns to go, and Stiles makes an annoyed noise behind him.

“All right then, see you later, buddy!” Stiles calls out, and something about the emphasis he puts on ‘buddy’ makes Derek stop and look back. Stiles looks annoyed and confused, and Scott has wandered off back towards the school, focusing intently on his cell phone. Did Stiles tell Scott about what happened, is Scott trying to give them space? Fuck, fuck.

“Don’t be an asshole,” is the only thing that Derek can think of to say.

“That is so rich, coming from you.” Stiles is advancing on him like he thinks they’re going to have a serious discussion now, and no, no that is not happening. Derek steps backward. “You big weirdo, you kiss me and then ignore me for a week and then randomly show up again just to lecture me on discretion? And if you run away again I swear to god, I will tell Erica everything and then she will never stop teasing you for the rest of your life and you will be much sorrier in the long run than you’ll be if you just man up and talk to me.”

Derek stops backing away. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Stiles laughs and makes a hand motion that kind of looks like he’s trying to mime strangling Derek. “I don’t know, let’s just pretend we’ve gone back in time to last week, and you’ve just kissed me and I have said ‘That was very unexpected Derek, could you tell me why that just happened?’ Aaaaand now it’s your turn to talk.”

Derek grinds his teeth together. Maybe if he stays quiet, Stiles will just keep talking for him and have this conversation with himself. But Stiles is looking at him expectantly and not saying anything else, although he looks like waiting for the answer is killing him a little bit.

“It was nothing. Just a stupid impulsive, heat-of-the-moment kind of thing. You should forget about it.”

Stiles heaves a dramatic sigh and steps closer. “Look, dude... do you like me? Like _like_ me like me?”

Derek feels hot all over. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Because that would be okay! Well, like, obviously it’s okay, but I mean I wouldn’t... I’ve thought about it, okay? Even though you’re a huge dick to me pretty much all the time, but like. I wouldn’t be opposed to uh. Anything.”

Derek waits, but Stiles just licks his lips and rocks back and forth on his heels, waiting for a response. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say,” Derek says finally. 

“Right.” Stiles takes a deep breath and steps closer, again, he’s far too close for comfort now. “You can kiss me again if you want to.”

Stiles’ heartbeat is really annoyingly loud and Derek thinks that if he were to actually touch him, Stiles would jump several feet in the air. “I think I’m gonna pass.”

Stiles’ shoulders slump. “Must you really take every single opportunity to be a jerk? I’m actually trying to be nice here, I’m saying that you don’t have to be embarrassed because—it’s reciprocal, I think, maybe! And I know now that you don’t find me repulsive, you can’t blame a kiss on an involuntary muscle spasm, but you’re just too fucking stubborn to admit anything so just whatever, whatever to you.”

“I—why do you need me to _admit_ anything? In fact, why did you need us to talk about it at all? I thought I made it pretty clear that it wasn’t going to happen again, so—“ So why the hell is Stiles the way he is? Why does he have to keep pushing and nagging and talking, always with the fucking talking.

“Because you can’t just kiss someone and then run away! People don’t just do that! And it made me intensely curious, like this is the most interesting thing to happen to my personal life that doesn’t involve magic or werewolves or—well I guess it involves werewolves, but you know what I mean! Did you really expect me to just let it drop?”

“I had hoped,” Derek says bitterly, and Stiles makes some very frustrated noises at him.

“Look, just stand there, okay? I’m going to try something, don’t move.” 

And Derek must be worse off than he’d even realized, because he automatically listens to Stiles and stands still. By the time he’s realized that Stiles is moving forward to kiss him, it’s too late.

Derek tries to pull away, but Stiles’ determined hands have clamped onto his shoulders, and—he doesn’t try very hard to pull away. At first it’s uncomfortable, just two mouths smashed together, and then it just shifts, and things that Derek has been trying hard to repress make their way to the surface. Stiles’ lips are very warm and it feels good, good in an uncomplicated physical way that is entirely separate from the busy panic happening in Derek’s brain.

It’s over before Derek can decide on the best course of action. “Huh,” Stiles says, staring into Derek’s eyes. “I think I can safely say I’m into guys, then.”

And that breaks Derek’s spell of indecision, because oh right, Stiles is figuring out his sexuality _because he’s sixteen._ Derek steps back. “Good for you. I’m leaving now.”

“No! No, you can’t—how many times can I call you a jerk in one conversation?!”

“We’re not going to do this!” Derek snaps. “You want me to admit that I’m attracted to you, fine, but that doesn’t change anything. No more kissing. Find another guy to be into.”

Derek had expected that last line to hurt his feelings, had realized it was too harsh and said it anyway, but Stiles just shrugs a shoulder, undeterred. “Why no more kissing? You obviously kind of like it and I didn’t think you liked anything on God’s green earth, so why not?”

“Gee, Stiles, I don’t know, maybe because I’m a 23-year-old adult alpha werewolf, and you’re in _high school._ ”

That at least makes Stiles hesitate for a second, but then he just smirks. “I might be in high school, but that just makes you the creepy older guy who hangs out with high-schoolers all the time. It would probably actually be weirder for you to date someone your own age.”

That is completely unfair, and Derek wants to give Stiles all the reasons why it’s unfair and inaccurate, but that would be beside the point. “Hanging out with you and your little friends is really bad enough. Maybe I don’t want to be the even creepier guy who dates the teenagers he hangs out with.”

“I had no idea you were so sensitive to people thinking you were creepy. Scott and I should have tried that line of reasoning months ago, ‘hey Derek, don’t turn those three teenagers into werewolves, people will think you’re creepy!’”

“Fine! Fine, you want another reason why romantic involvement with me is a bad idea? Maybe because I’m stronger and faster than you, and if you’re around when I lose control, you could end up very, very dead.” Derek steps closer, and Stiles has at least a modicum of self-preservation instinct, because he looks a little hesitant now. Derek leans in. “You’re a smart boy. I’m sure you’ve noticed how many times Scott has come close to hurting Allison.”

Stiles’ eyes dart between Derek’s eyes and his mouth. He takes in a shaky breath and lifts his chin slightly. “That was back when Scott had just barely turned, and you’ve been a werewolf your whole life. You’ve got your shit under control, can’t fool me.”

Derek smiles as terribly as he can. “And what if I hurt you because you’ve pissed me off?”

Stiles takes in another deep breath and puts his hands on Derek’s chest, pushing him back a step. “Stop trying to scare me. Look, I realize that we yell at each other all the time, but I do actually know by now that you’re not a bad person. You really think I’d be begging you to date me if I didn’t?”

“You could be wrong.” Derek feels like he’s holding onto the edge of a cliff and his fingers are slipping, slipping, he should step away and out of Stiles’ personal space.

“I don’t think I am.” Stiles leans in, but not far enough to kiss Derek again; for once in his life, he doesn’t seem to be pushing. Derek could turn around and walk away, if he wanted to, and Stiles would probably be mad and frustrated, but this would probably be over. Crisis averted.

He closes his eyes and leans in and it turns out that kissing Stiles is even better when Derek has given up.

***

“Um, so um, I think my next class started five minutes ago. So I should go. Probably.” 

Derek doesn’t know how much time he spent making out with Stiles against the side of someone else’s car before Stiles pulls away and babbles into his ear. Derek pulls away too, muttering an incoherent agreement to the idea of Stiles leaving.

Stiles’ eyes are wide and his lips are shiny and his cheeks (not his cheeks: the spots of skin on both sides of his jaw that always flush) are red. All Derek can do is nod and take his hands off of Stiles’ ass and step back, enough to let Stiles slide by him. 

“So then I’ll see you,” Stiles says in the same breathless voice, walking backwards and doing something with his wrist that was probably an aborted wave. Derek nods again and shoves his hands in his pockets. He turns and starts walking out of the parking lot to keep himself from watching Stiles walk all the way back into the school, but he can still hear Stiles’ heartbeat and his loud, excited breaths.

Derek has an erection, and it’s making his pants uncomfortable. He’s not stumbling but it sort of seems like he should be; he feels like the descriptions he’s heard of being stoned. Dazed and demented and like the physical things around him just aren’t very real. 

Stiles texts him in the evening asking him to come over. Derek debates telling him no, but he fears that if Derek declines to go to Stiles’ house, then Stiles might just show up at the train station. It would be pointless to try and tell him no. And Derek—wants to see him. It’s as terrible an idea as it ever was, but Derek has already fucked up twice now and it’s starting to seem inevitable. 

When he gets to the Stilinskis’ doorstep, Stiles pulls the door open immediately after Derek knocks. Derek suspects that he was waiting just inside the door, which for some reason makes Derek feel embarrassed. Then again, everything about this is embarrassing.

Stiles leans his arm on the door frame, his hand resting above his head so that his flannel sleeve slips down, showing his forearm. The hair on his forearm is really dark and stands out against his pale skin, and he has a scattering of moles from the inside of his elbow up to his wrist.

“Yo! I mean, hi. Hey. Hel-lo,” Stiles says, wasting no time in trying to ease the awkwardness with even-more-awkward humor. 

“Hey.” Derek feels an intense need to do something with his hands, and stuffs them further into his pockets. Stiles’ mouth is open in a shape that’s not quite a smile or a smirk--something in between.

“I’m kind of surprised that you came. I mean, never mind, forget I just said that, I don’t want to open up anything to debate again. Come on in, my dad won’t be home for hours.” Derek watches the tips of Stiles’ fingers blur as his hands move through the air--he makes almost one new abortive gesture for every word he says. And then his hand is giving Derek’s shoulder a jocular slap before gripping him and tugging him inside. 

“You have a nice house,” Derek says, following Stiles through the living room. This is the first time he’s seen the bottom floor. When Derek was hiding from the police, Stiles kept him confined to his bedroom and the upstairs bathroom. It smells different down here--it smells like Stiles and his dad actually spending time together and being a family, rather than the combined smell of them in the bathroom that just amounted to proximity. It smells like a father and son, shared meals and sympathy for teenage problems and punishment for teenage misbehavior. Shared mourning, too.

“Thanks. Yeah, it’s cool.” Stiles thinks that Derek is following a social nicety, doesn’t hear any of the longing or nostalgia. Which is a good thing, definitely.

“I mean, I try not to take it for granted, you know?” Stiles glances at Derek out of the corner of his eye. So maybe he isn’t so oblivious.

“Is this the house you were living in when your mother died?” 

Derek immediately wants to take the question back. It just slipped out and he’s horrified with himself. “I’m sorry, never mind, I shouldn’t have--”

“No, it’s fine.” Stiles laughs, the jittery noise that he makes as a reaction to being surprised or shocked. Derek wonders how long he’s been keeping track of Stiles’ defense mechanisms. “Um, yeah, it is. I’ve lived here pretty much my whole life, I think. Maybe we had another house when I was super little, I dunno.”

“I’m sorry for asking. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

“It’s really okay.” Stiles gives him a crooked smile. “You’re really awkward. You’re like the way Scott used to be with girls, except with you it’s just everyone.”

This is usually the point in the conversation when Derek would tell Stiles to shut up and a petty argument would break out, but considering that Derek just asked Stiles about his mother’s death and Stiles didn’t yell at him for it--Derek tries to choose a different conversational route. “I’m not awkward. I just don’t like people.”

That makes Stiles laugh--for once Derek has managed to make Stiles laugh at an actual joke, instead of just at Derek himself. It’s nice. But then Stiles says, “Not even me?” and Derek is right back to resisting the urge to fight or flee. 

“Uh, I didn’t mean--not like that. Never mind,” Stiles says, looking even more embarrassed than Derek. His cheeks are turning red. 

Derek takes a breath, trying to calm his tripping heartbeat and the butterflies jumping in his stomach. Act normal, whatever normal is. He makes himself smile. “Now who’s the awkward one?”

Stiles looks relieved and surprised to be bailed out like that. He laughs, and it’s still uncomfortable, but some of the pressure seems to have left the room. Stiles leans back against the kitchen counter, curling his fingers around the edge.

"I never claimed to not be awkward. I'm like the king of awkward." Stiles gives him a lopsided smile. He looks very much sixteen. Derek breathes through his nose and looks away.

"You invited me over," he says to the window. “Why?”

He expects Stiles to say that he invited Derek to come over and kiss some more, or worse, he invited Derek over for sex. But instead Stiles shrugs and says. “Umm, don’t faint from shock or anything, but I guess I thought we could just hang out. Give that a try, you know?”

“Really,” Derek says. “Hanging out.”

Stiles makes a face at him. “Are you familiar with the concept?”

The concept makes Derek feel old and deeply sore. He doesn’t think he’s ‘hung out’ with anyone since Laura died, and being with his sister--was that hanging out? It never felt casual enough, or easy enough. It felt like grieving, or standing guard. 

He rolls his eyes at Stiles and says, “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of it.”

“Good, I was worried there for a second.” Stiles smirks, and Derek feels a rush of something that he eventually identifies as affection. But Stiles doesn’t seem to know what to say or do next, his gaze darting around the room and his heartbeat speeding up.

“We could get out of here,” Derek suggests, and cringes because he feels like he’s said a line from a movie. 

Stiles steps away from the counter, slapping his hands on his legs and looking relaxed again. “Sure. You got somewhere else in mind?”

“No.” 

“Of course you don’t. Well, whatever, we can just drive around.” Stiles knocks his shoulder against Derek’s as he passes him, the keys to the Jeep already in his hand. Derek feels like he should make some token protest against Stiles driving when they could be in the Camaro, but instead he just follows Stiles back out of the house.

The sun is going down while Stiles takes the quickest route to the outskirts of Beacon Hills, and it’s not like there’s a particularly showy sunset or anything, but it is kind of nice. But there is one thing that Derek never had to deal with during the times that Stiles had driven him to or from life-threatening supernatural situations, which is that Stiles is absolutely crazy when it comes to the radio: he refuses to listen to commercials or a DJ talking or any song that he’s not in the right mood for, which means he changes stations every two minutes or so. Sometimes he changes the station in the middle of a song, claiming to have gotten sick of it, and he provides commentary on every single song he lands on. “This is so overplayed,” and “I like this one but I can’t listen to it because it’ll get stuck in my head for days” and “This is objectively terrible but I will totally turn it up and sing along when I’m alone in the car” and “I swear that I’m not a Taylor Swift fan but you really have to admit that this is catchy” and “I fucking _hate_ this song, why am I even listening to it?”

“Why do you listen to the radio at all if you hate it so much?” Derek says despairingly, and Stiles laughs like he knows exactly how aggravating he is.

“I’m supposed to get an iPod adapter for my next birthday,” Stiles says. “I might not use it, though. Why break with tradition? And no, don’t give me the stinkeye, this is probably the most sustained exposure you’ve had to pop music in years, it’s good for you.”

“I disagree,” Derek says, but Stiles has this smug look on his face like he knows that Derek doesn’t really mean any of his complaints. Derek knows that he should be protesting more against this whole thing, but somehow it’s just not happening. He shakes his head and looks out the window as the scattered gas stations and warehouses give way to trees. Stiles fiddles with the tuner again, making static blast in Derek’s ears before he lands on Katy Perry.

Stiles finally pulls to a stop in a secluded parking lot on a hill in the middle of the forest. Derek blinks and looks around, incredulous. “You brought me to a makeout spot?”

“Excuse me, no, this is the _underage drinking_ spot. It’s just that, uh, sometimes people make out here after the drinking.” Stiles scratches at the back of his neck with his car key.

“Right.” Derek hides his smile as he gets out of the Jeep. His misgivings keep getting quieter, drowned out by Stiles’ chatter and his stupid radio. 

Stiles makes him climb up and sit on the Jeep’s hood, and it’s getting dark, but between light pollution and the cloud cover, there are few stars. The moon is still low in the sky, and it’s big--four days away from full. Derek expects Stiles to keep up the conversation, but he’s not saying anything, and his nervousness settles over both of them like a cloak.

Derek can’t come up with a single thing to say. All he can think about is how this should be awful, either boring or horribly uncomfortable, what with both of them sitting here and carefully not looking at each other and neither one talking. But somehow it isn’t awful at all. Maybe that’s what he should say to get them talking again--maybe he can just tell Stiles that he has a good time with him.

“So,” Derek says, and Stiles looks over at him. Derek opens his mouth but ends up not saying anything, kissing Stiles instead. Stiles starts kissing him back immediately, grabbing for Derek’s jacket and pulling himself closer, changing the angle to get his tongue in Derek’s mouth. It’s easier than it was in the school parking lot, less anxious and sloppy. But Stiles is still pushier than Derek expected--he unzips Derek’s jacket so that he can run his hands over Derek’s ribcage and his back, then tugs Derek’s shirt up to run his hands over Derek’s back. And he pulls away from Derek’s mouth to kiss Derek’s jaw and neck, which makes Derek bite his lip against a groan. That seems to only encourage Stiles, because he kisses lower on Derek’s neck, and starts biting and sucking at the skin just above Derek’s collarbone. He just laughs when Derek complains that Stiles is going to give him a hickey. 

“No I won’t, you’ll heal,” Stiles says, smiling against Derek’s adam’s apple. Derek cups the back of Stiles’ skull and drags his face up to kiss his lips again.

Derek can smell it when Stiles starts getting hard, and he’s already there himself. Derek’s shirt is still on, but only technically speaking: Stiles has pushed it up to Derek’s armpits to facilitate sucking and biting at his nipples, which makes Derek’s hips arch up into Stiles’ hips. Derek is just going with it, and before he can realize or process anything, Stiles has him lying down on the Jeep’s hood, and he’s undoing Derek’s belt and pulling his pants down. Derek has a moment of embarrassment at the obviousness of the erection in his briefs, but Stiles comes back to kissing his mouth and the embarrassment gets buried beneath everything else.

Stiles breaks off the kiss and scoots back until he’s straddling Derek’s knees and leaning over Derek’s stomach. The tip of his nose brushes Derek’s navel, and he’s so sensitive there that it almost tickles and he jerks. Stiles laughs, palms Derek’s dick and looks up at him, and it comes up out of nowhere to hit Derek hard, a memory that he’s tried for years to forget. He’s sixteen years old and kneeling between Kate’s legs, looking up at her amused face as he asks if this is okay, knowing that she’d say yes. Being so eager to show her what he could do for her, so eager to go down on someone for the first time.

“No, I don’t want--” Derek stops it before Stiles can get his mouth on him, his hands on Stiles’ shoulders pushing him away. He pulls his own pants up and slides off the Jeep before Stiles can even react, sitting up confused and off-balance. 

“Uh, sorry? I was just... sorry, I thought that was what you wanted.” Stiles’ confusion and sudden shyness makes it so much worse, and Derek is backing further away before he can stop himself.

“Well, I don’t.” Derek zips up his fly and buckles his belt, avoiding looking up. He doesn’t want to see the look on Stiles’ face.

“Geez. Okay, sorry.” 

“Stop apologizing.” Derek rubs a hand over his face and wills his heartbeat to slow the hell down. Kate is dead and it’s been almost a fucking decade since he gave her head that first time, it’s not fucking fair that the memory should still be so vivid. It’s not fair that she still gets him like this. He’s not sixteen anymore, but Stiles is, and he hates that he recognized that eager look in Stiles’ eyes so immediately.

“Sorry for being sorry,” Stiles says sarcastically. “Jeez man, what is your problem? You didn’t have to, like, sprint away from me.” 

Derek looks up, and Stiles is finally looking pissed instead of hurt or insecure. Thank god. “It’s not you,” he says. “I just...” 

The words just hang there, because Derek doesn’t actually have any clue how to explain his own stupid malfunctions. Stiles glares at him and tugs his own t-shirt back down to cover his stomach.

“Whatever, let’s just go,” Stiles says before Derek can fail any more at making things right. Derek follows him, getting back into the passenger seat, and Stiles doesn’t turn the radio back on as they pull out of the parking lot.

Derek feels worse and worse until they’re only a few minutes away from his house, and he really doesn’t want to let Stiles drop him off while Stiles is still this angry. It’s funny, considering how often Stiles has been mad at him in the time they’ve known each other, that the idea is now upsetting to Derek. He just doesn’t want to leave things this way.

“I’m sorry,” he tries again. 

Stiles doesn’t look any less grumpy. “For what, exactly? Sending me so many mixed messages that you might as well be my postman?”

Derek wants to tell Stiles that that’s a bad pun, but he lets it go. “For freaking out. I’m not very good at, um. This.”

“You’re not very good at most things,” Stiles says. It’s a mean enough dig that Derek feels like they’re back at the cruel argument that started this whole thing, yelling at each other over a magic bowl of Derek’s blood. Derek hunches in on himself.

“I just don’t want to have sex yet.” Not until you stop reminding me of being a teenager, or possibly never.

“If you feel that way, then you should have said that,” Stiles says. His voice breaks slightly, making Derek feel much worse. “You fucking say that, instead of shoving me away like I’ve got cooties or something. Jesus, Derek.”

They’ve reached Derek’s house. At least his pack isn’t here waiting for him, a small mercy. 

“I know, it was bad. I really am sorry,” Derek says. He sighs and leans his forehead against the Jeep’s window. He feels exhausted, and dumb for thinking that this could work out. 

“Yeah, whatever. My dad’s gonna be home soon so I gotta go, so--” Stiles makes a shooing motion, and drives away as soon as Derek’s gotten out of his car. Derek walks inside and doesn’t watch him go.

***

_I'm still pissed but apology accepted I guess._

Derek gets the text at two in the morning, while he's lying in bed halfheartedly trying to read a book about WWI. 

Derek isn't honest with himself about how much relief he feels. He texts back, _can't sleep?_

_neither can you obviously_

_maybe I'm just nocturnal_

_seriously dude, still mad at you._

Derek pulls a face at his cell phone screen. This is the last conversation he ever thought he'd have via text, but it's not like he wants to have it face to face, either. He doesn't want to have it at all: he wants Stiles to tell him what to do to make it better, then do whatever thing that is, and never talk about it again.

While Derek is brooding, Stiles sends another text. _why don't you want to have sex with me?_

There is no good way to answer this. Derek wants to turn his phone off and not reply, but he suspects that would result in Stiles going back to calling him an asshole the next time they met. And Derek had enjoyed being on Stiles' good side, for all of the six hours that lasted.

_it’s hard to explain. mostly I don't want to hurt you._

_lol what the hell, of course you're not going to hurt me, didn't realize you were such a nervous nellie. Is this about the werewolf thing?_

_its a lot of things. I'm older than you, I'm a werewolf, and our lives are always in danger. I don't want to rush._ Derek is hoping that by listing a bunch of other factors in addition to Stiles' age, he can distract Stiles from realizing that that is absolutely the crux of the problem.

_whatever you're no fun_

_does this mean I'm out of the doghouse?_

_wow you really want to open yourself up to dog puns like that?_

Derek smiles and rolls over onto his back. There's a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach and he feels totally unlike himself. Which sets off all sorts of alarm bells, but he pretends not to hear them. _I think someone whose best friend is a werewolf should show some restraint with the dog puns._

_lol you're welcome to think that but don't get your hopes up_

Derek doesn’t know what to say next; he’s exhausted what little capacity for jokes that he has, so he just texts _can I see you tomorrow?_

_sure, why not?_

Derek turns his phone off and goes for a run. He’s not actually nocturnal, but he gives up on sleep enough nights that he’s getting close. The physical exertion mostly keeps him thinking, which is good, because he still feels uncertain about Stiles’ answers. Stiles is a lot easier to read when Derek can smell him and see his face.   
Derek has hours to kill while his pack (and Stiles, but he tells himself that’s not on his mind) is in school (and even worse, as he remembers late in the day, they have lacrosse practice this afternoon). This, of course, has been his daily routine for a while, and it’s getting old. Maybe he should get a job, even though he doesn’t need the money. Nor is he qualified to do anything. And he can picture Stiles (and probably Erica, probably Boyd behind his back) laughing if they found out. 

Having nothing to do in the afternoon gives him an unfortunate amount of time to debate whether to text Stiles first or just show up when the school gets out. He decides against texting, not least because he can’t decide on what the wording should be, and he’s beginning to wonder if this sort of decision-making process is going to drive him insane. It doesn’t feel sustainable.

Stiles and Scott are usually finished by ten minutes after practices end (and _why_ does he know that?), and Derek leans against his car in the parking lot as a horde of sweaty, self-involved teenaged boys streams past him. After too much time has passed, Derek texts Stiles to ask if anyone has slipped in the shower or fallen into a toilet. No response, which is aggravating because Derek had thought that his text was pretty funny. He can’t bring himself to text Scott, so he does the next best thing and calls Isaac, who sounds confused: he says that he can’t remember whether or not he saw Scott and Stiles in the locker room at all, even though he definitely remembers them being present during the practice itself.

Derek remains calm. He orders Erica and Boyd to search the school and see if they can get any kind of scent, sends Isaac to Scott’s house, and half-heartedly heads to the locker room himself. He realizes that there might be some mundane explanation for this, but the seed of uneasiness in his stomach is struggling to grow and he needs to do something. Derek has been waiting in the parking lot since before the practice ended; if they left without changing in the locker room first, he would have seen.

Wrong smells hit Derek as soon as he opens the door to the locker room. It’s empty by now, but in addition to all the sweat, humid lacrosse gear and Axe body spray, there’s the smell of adult men--strangers, not the Coach. 

And it’s not completely empty, he realizes. He walks to the back of the lockers, following the faint sound of someone breathing, and finds the person in the supply closet, unconscious and propped against the wall. It’s one of Stiles’ friends, the guy that helped them hack Scott’s cell history months ago--Dan, or something like that.

“Dan. Dan, wake up.” Dan falls against him as soon as Derek opens the door, and Derek awkwardly tries to sit him up on the locker room bench. There’s an angry red mark on Dan’s forehead, which will probably bruise; someone knocked him out with a blow to the head. Derek shakes him and calls his name again.

“Huh?” Dan’s eyes finally open and he stares blearily up at the ceiling, then at Derek. “Miguel?”

Derek inwardly curses Stiles’ improvisational decisions. “Yeah, hi again, Dan.What happened here? Have you seen Stiles?”

“I’m fine, thank you for asking, and my name is Danny.” Danny gingerly touches the lump on his head, giving Derek a dirty look. Derek tries to turn his glare into an expression of concern.

“Sorry. I don’t think you’re seriously hurt. Do you know where Stiles is?”

“Give me some space.” Danny pushes at Derek’s shoulder until Derek backs up a step. “Is he missing or something? He was at practice, as far as I know. Then again, it’s possible I missed something after being accosted and locked in the supply room.”

“Will you just tell me what happened?”

Danny hesitates. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

Derek wants to roll his eyes and tell Danny that no one could possibly say anything that sounds crazy in this damn town, and if Danny doesn’t realize that than he’s an unobservant idiot, but he holds himself back, because Danny’s heart is beating faster. He smells confused and afraid, freaked out. 

“I won’t think you’re crazy,” he says. He tries to put a comforting hand on Danny’s shoulder, but it just makes Danny look more uncomfortable. Derek takes his hand back.

“There were these two guys on the team, Kurt and Kenneth. And--I don’t know how to explain this, but...it seemed like they’d been on the team all along. If you asked me this morning, I couldn’t tell you what grade they were in or when I met them or when they joined the team, but everyone just accepted that they were part of the team and always had been. And then today in the locker room, I noticed them arguing, and I just--looked at them, and it was like I suddenly realized that I had no idea who the hell these guys were. They were total strangers, total _adult_ strangers who just randomly showed up yesterday and somehow made us think that they’d been on the team all along.”

“And you were the only one who noticed?”  
“Well, yeah. I think so. It was like I saw the wizard behind the curtain or something, you know? Only I didn’t even know there was a curtain. And then they hit me on the head and put me in there, I guess.” Danny frowns. “That is really messed up. I think we should call the police.”

“Let’s not call them just yet,” Derek says, and Danny stares at him.

“What? Why? They’re two grown men who infiltrated a high school sports team, and then they assaulted me and locked me in a supply closet.” Danny is now looking at him like he thinks that Derek is mentally deficient.

Derek sighs. He doesn’t really have a good reason not to involve the cops; he just said no automatically. What Danny’s describing sounds a lot like witchcraft, which means that the police don’t really have a shot in hell of finding them, so it doesn’t matter much one way or another.

“When you heard them talking, did you hear them say anything about Scott or Stiles?” Derek asks without much hope, and Danny is already shaking his head before Derek’s even finished his sentence.

“No, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were involved, because they seem to be involved in every weird thing that happens in this school.” Danny narrows his eyes at Derek. “I don’t suppose you could tell me why?”

“Nope.” Derek backs away from Danny’s disgusted eye rolling, trying not to run through worst-case scenarios in his head. Witches might have been interested in the lacrosse team as a way to get to Isaac or Boyd, but considering that neither Isaac nor Boyd are MIA, Derek is willing to bet that they were after Scott. Who knows why--Scott just seems to be really attractive to dangerous supernatural sorts.

And they got Stiles too, of course. Maybe because Stiles also figured out what was going on, or maybe the Kurt and Kenneth’s lacrosse reconnaissance gave them the insight that considering Stiles’ status as Scott’s best friend and the fastest one to figure anything out, they were better off taking them both.

Danny leaves, muttering about a possible concussion. Derek is alone in the locker room now, without any clues as to who these guys are and what they want with the Beacon Hills lacrosse team. He shakes his head to clear it and focuses. He needs to concentrate in order to make out any details about what happened here, and he has to make multiple rounds of the locker room before he can discern any individual scents. But eventually he finds what he’s looking for: Stiles and Scott, alone and then together and then joined by the two adult male scents. The four of them left the locker room together, got about twenty yards away from the building, and then the trail stops cold. The scents don’t fade away or get masked by anything else, they just cut off abruptly, unnaturally. It has to be some spell. Or maybe the witches can teleport--Derek doesn’t think so, but he wouldn’t bet on his limited knowledge about witchcraft to be accurate about any of this. 

At least there’s no sign of a struggle. No blood, no dented lockers which would indicate a fight with a werewolf, and no scent of anyone-who-isn’t-Danny’s fear. They went willingly.

He meets Erica and Boyd at the school’s entrance. “Scott and Stiles have been kidnapped by witches,” he says calmly, and punches a hole in the school’s brick wall.

***

“I don’t think this is going well,” Boyd says.

“Shut up,” Derek says. The fireballs getting hurled their way are going to burn through the flimsy cover at their backs in about thirty seconds. Derek is concentrating on pushing the piece of his tibia that’s broken the skin back inside his leg so that his bones can knit back together.

“Erica and Isaac are unconscious at best,” Boyd says, and then he stiffens. “Wait, you’d be able to feel it or something if they were dead, right? You’d know?”

“We’d both feel it,” Derek snaps. “They’re fine, these guys don’t seem to have any interest in killing us once we’re down.” Which is not actually true, now that he thinks about it--they have plenty of interest in killing Derek, just not his pack. Which gives him an idea.

“They’re not trying to kill you and Erica and Boyd because you’re betas. That means that I can draw their fire while you slip past them to get to Scott and Stiles.”

Boyd stares at him. “That is the worst plan I have ever heard.”

“You don’t think they’ll go after me instead of you?” Derek gestures to the right side of his chest, which is basically charred meat at this point. 

“No, I’m just beginning to worry about your suicidal tendencies!” Boyd twists around to look at the posse of witches behind them. “It’s kind of hard not to notice that all your plans turn out this way.”

“Shut up,” Derek says, putting as much of an alpha snarl into his voice as he’s currently capable of. His leg is sort-of healed by now, and he twists around to vault over their cover and attack before Boyd can voice any more protests. 

Most of Derek’s body is shredded or on fire by the time Boyd gets back with Scott and Stiles. And the second the witches notice that Stiles has escaped, Derek might as well be chopped liver: they stop being human flame-throwers and devote all of their energy to getting Stiles back. Derek can’t do much more than watch while Scott and Boyd get thrown against the wall by a witch in her hurry to get to Stiles; when Derek tries to yell, it comes out choked and weak.

But they don’t seem interested in hurting Stiles. They keep their distance, hovering out of his reach while they use magic to try and immobilize him, the spells showing as barely-visible purple shimmering ropes of air wrapping around his wrists. It doesn’t work: for a second, Stiles’ wrists get pulled behind his back as if someone has handcuffed him, but then as Stiles yelps and struggles, it’s like the magic just lets go and he stumbles forward.

This clearly takes the witches by surprise, and Stiles takes advantage of their shock by lunging forward and tackling the youngest smallest witch to the ground. “Scott!” he yells, and when Scott rushes to his side, Stiles grabs his wrist and holds his hand above the girl’s throat. The girl stops trying to push Stiles off and holds very still.

“This is your daughter, right?” Stiles says to the wizard who seems to be the leader. A ball of flame glows ominously in his palm.

“I’m immune, right? So you know that won’t hurt me.” The jump in Stiles’ heart rate gives away the lie--he’s not immune, and he has no idea if balls of fire will be as ineffective as the spells to capture him--but the witches can’t hear that. “But your daughter isn’t immune to having her throat ripped open, which my werewolf buddy is ready to do.” Stiles shakes Scott’s wrist, and Scott obediently grows out his claws until they’re centimeters away from the girl’s skin, although he looks like he feels bad about it.

“Let her go, or you know that I’ll kill all of your friends,” the wizard replies. There’s something in his voice that’s almost kindness or pity, as if he’s trying to gently coax Stiles toward a solution that Stiles already knows to be right. 

“You really want to bet that I care about these people who are _not_ related to me more than you care about your daughter?” Stiles’ voice wavers and cracks. He’s not a good liar, but he’s looking the wizard in the eye and his jaw is set. Scott edges closer to him, one hand on Stiles’ shoulder. Derek wants to tell him to grab Stiles and run, to get him safe while Derek delays the witches’ pursuit as much as he can. But Derek can’t even drag himself to a sitting position, let alone fight any more.

The daughter lets out a whimper as one of Scott’s claws scrapes her skin and draws blood. The fireball disappears from her father’s hand and his shoulders slump. 

“Okay then, here’s what we’ll do. Your daughter is going to stay with Scott and I until we get back to the school. We’ll leave her by the same locker room you kidnapped us from. You can come get her in an hour--and if you come before then, we’ll know, and we’ll kill her before you can get her home safe.”

“No,” says the wizard immediately. “Let her go now, or--”

“I am not kidding around!” Stiles says. Scott helps out with a low, threatening growl, and if Derek had never met Scott before, right now he would absolutely believe him to be capable of killing this girl. “Your whole gang is going to leave this random-ass hole in the ground to give us time to escape, you’re not going to follow us, and in an hour you can come get your daughter. Got it?”

There’s more grumbling after that, but the witches leave eventually. Derek slumps fully onto the ground, letting his head roll back until he’s staring at the ceiling. There’s no distraction from the pain now, and the world around him is getting hazy. 

And then Stiles’ face is overhead, looming over Derek. “You horrify me in every way possible,” he says, gingerly touching Derek’s shoulder. Derek is going to guess that the repulsed face Stiles is making is due to the extent of Derek’s injuries.

“Thanks,” Derek says, doing his best not to whimper in pain when Stiles tries to help him sit up.

“Oh my god this is so gross, oh my god is that your _skin?_ Oh jesus--I think it’s trying to fall off.”

“I’ll heal,” Derek mutters, and things get hazy again as he passes out.

He wakes up on a cot in Deaton’s clinic, with the extreme sense of vertigo and nausea that he always gets when his body’s been forced to heal too much too fast. He’d very much like to be unconscious again, but the lights are bright and the room smells so strongly of antiseptic that his nostrils burn.

“Oh hey, you’re finally awake.” Boyd is standing over him, smiling the way you smile at people in hospital beds, or at five-year-olds.

Derek grunts. His throat is dry enough that it hurts to swallow, and his thoughts don’t seem to be pulling together coherently like they should.

Boyd covers Derek’s hand with his own, then takes his hand back like he’s thought better of it. “You really overdid it with the martyrdom this time, you know. You looked really bad by the time we showed up and rescued you. I hope I never have to heal from wounds that bad, seriously.”

Derek would shrug if he wasn’t pretty sure the motion would hurt. “I was fine.”

Boyd swallows. “You were. Okay, then. I definitely believe that.”

Derek closes his eyes. The fucking lights in here. “You feel guilty.”

He can hear Boyd shifting his weight and doing something with his hand--fidgeting. Boyd is not normally a fidgeter. The guilt would be obvious even if Derek couldn’t smell it. 

“I shouldn’t have left you,” Boyd says.

Derek opens his eyes to glare. “Yes you should have. Leaving aside the fact that you had to leave to save Scott and Stiles, I’m your Alpha and I gave you the order to leave.”

“Oh my god, fuck that!” Boyd says, too loud for Derek’s current state. “Sorry man, but that’s bullshit. Isn’t it also my job to back you up and protect you? Like, isn’t that the whole point of being in a werewolf pack instead of on your own?”

Derek can’t deal with this right now. He needs to make Boyd understand that a crucial part of pack survival is that the alpha’s authority isn’t questioned--unless the beta wants to challenge him and take the authority himself. It can’t be a democracy, he can’t be soft, not if he wants to keep them alive. But at the moment, the thought of any kind of display of dominance, let alone a lecture on pack leadership structure, just makes his head spin. “Someone has to be in charge.”

Boyd rolls his eyes. “Yeah, man, I’m not arguing that. I just don’t like leaving you to die, whether or not you’ve ordered me to.”

Maybe Derek shouldn’t be surprised by this sudden outpouring of concern from Boyd, but he is, and he doesn’t know how to react to it. He looks away. “It was necessary.”

“You keep telling yourself that. But the next time you feel like suicide-by-enemy-fire, I’m not gonna help you out.” Boyd pats Derek’s hand again, then squeezes his shoulder for several seconds, and Derek has an awful feeling that if he were sitting upright, Boyd would try to hug him.

“Deaton said you should rest more, so I’m gonna go. But I’m serious, okay, from now on I ignore any orders from you that are 90% likely to end up with you dead.” 

“This conversation isn’t over,” is the only rebuttal Derek can muster.

“Sure.” Boyd gives him another shoulder squeeze before finally leaving. 

Derek turns over on his side, away from the ceiling lights. So Boyd cares whether he lives or dies. He should probably be pleased at the display of loyalty, but instead he just feels tired and annoyed. He doesn’t know whether he should accept the affection (maybe even the friendship, who knows) or be more authoritarian, and there’s no one he can ask.

He’s almost managed to fall back asleep when the door to his room bangs open. It’s Stiles, of course. “So I’m the one who gets kidnapped, but somehow you still get to be the wounded damsel when it’s all over? You couldn’t even share the concern-limelight for like a second?”

Derek sighs. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, you’re so inconsiderate.” Derek is still on his side, facing the wall, but he can hear Stiles’ padding footfalls as he crosses the room. Then Stiles’ fingers brush his forehead. “You look better than you did a few hours ago, but that’s setting the bar pretty low.”

“I’m fine. Werewolf healing.”

“Sure, play tough, see where that gets you.” Stiles lets out a long, shaky breath, and his fingers are now in Derek’s hair. “I can’t believe that Kurt and Kenneth were illusions, man. I liked those dudes! I still feel personally betrayed. I remember some good discussions of World of Warcraft and promises to hang out, and all that was coming from the mouths of two middle-aged wizards. Which, huh, saying that out loud makes me feel like I got lured in by an internet predator.”

Derek rolls over onto his back. “You talk too much.”

Stiles’ face attempts to scowl, but he looks too shell-shocked and worried for the expression to really come together. “Yeah, well, I’m falling back on humor and chatter as a mechanism to cover for my fear and anxiety, which should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain in the room. I mean, shouldn’t you be able to sniff that out or something?” 

“It’s exhausting, and I’m a recovering patient.”

“Uh-uh, I thought you felt all better because of your super stoic-werewolf healing powers! You just want sympathy.” Stiles’ voice gets shakier until it cracks slightly on the last word. He stops talking and covers his eyes, digging the heels of his hands into the sockets. Derek watches him swallow. 

Should he apologize? Derek doesn’t see what he’s done wrong. This is exhausting and a little upsetting and he almost wants Stiles to leave because Stiles is making him even dizzier.

“Fuck, Derek.” Stiles gives his eyes one last vicious rub before his movements flow into an assortment of other anxious, abortive gestures: touching his jaw, wrapping his fingers around his neck, scratching at the back of his head. “I’m glad you’re okay and I’m okay and we’re all okay, but fuck.”

Derek catches Stiles’ hand, both to offer comfort and because the jitteryness is getting to him. “I know.”

“You don’t, though, that’s the thing! You’ve been a werewolf your whole life, you don’t know what it’s like to live this totally mundane existence for sixteen years and then all of a sudden there are werewolves and monsters and something is trying to kill you and all your friends every week and a half, and sometimes there are witches on your lacrosse team and they think that you’re immune to magic you’re trying to keep them from finding out it’s really Lydia, and your--this guy you like gets himself really close to killed trying to rescue you.” Stiles finally takes a breath, and his shoulders slump, and he squeezes Derek’s hand. “I don’t really know how I’ve dealt with it as well as I have, to be honest.”

“It’s because you’re smart and brave,” Derek says, shrugging.

Stiles blinks at him. “Jesus, I didn’t mean to fish for compliments while you’re laid out dying on a gurney. I’m an asshole.”

“I’m not dying.”

“Whatever, you know what I mean!” Stiles glares and leans over to prop his elbows on the gurney, his face now only a few inches away. “I’m going to have nightmares about how you looked when we got to you, so thanks for that.”

Derek laughs. “You’re squeamish.” He tilts his head so that his chin is closer to Stiles’ cheek and he can feel the warm tickle of Stiles’ breath against his collarbone.

“I am! You know what, I really am, and I’m beginning to see what a terrible idea it is for a guy of my disposition to be constantly hanging around werewolves.” Just as Derek is starting to lean in, Stiles stands to his feet with a little jump and starts pacing again, with little jerks in his step like he’s being propelled by bursts of electricity that Derek can’t see. “What if we’re on some mission at some point and, like, all our lives are dependent on me opening up a dead body or sticking my hand into a wound or something, and all of us end up dying because I throw up and faint instead of doing what’s necessary?”

“We don’t go on missions,” Derek says. Stiles’ manic presence is swiftly becoming more of a burden than a comfort. The anxiety is coming off him in waves now, and regardless of how much of that anxiety is for Derek, it’s still too much for his senses right now. Derek loves Stiles, but this is exhausting.

Fuck. Derek mentally backpedals and thinks about other verbs, like ‘appreciates’ and ‘likes’ and ‘tolerates.’ It’s no use and his face feels like it’s on fire.

“I mean, when you see that one of your friends has gotten horribly injured, you should be right there helping out and stopping the bleeding and stuff, right? And it’s not like I _don’t_ have that instinct, pretty sure that I do an extent, but--ugh, man, I don’t know how Scott’s mom does it, I could never be a nurse.”

“Stiles,” Derek tries. “I’m really tired.”

“I’m babbling, aren’t I?” Stiles holds up a hand in apology, and his fingers are shaking a little. “Sorry sorry, you look like death and I’m babbling, I’ve already taken a Xanax but before that there was a lot of caffeine and I think they might have canceled each other out.”

“Stiles.”

“Sorry, it’s just, I was really fucking worried about you, okay? Like, if we’re being totally honest here, I was actually way more worried about you than I expected to be. Not that I wouldn’t have worried about you almost dying two weeks ago, but the growth in worry was like, exponential. If you graphed the changing extent of my concern, it would look alarming, like those graphs you see of the rising amount of carbon in our atmos--”

“Could you just leave me alone?” Derek’s angry at himself the second the words leave his mouth, but instead of taking it back, he rolls over so his back is to Stiles. He feels weak and hungry (and now guilty, because Stiles has stopped talking and his breaths are loud and too vulnerable). He would probably trade a kidney right now for the world around him to be dark and quiet.

“Of course, sure,” Stiles says, his voice different than it was two seconds ago. “Sorry again, I’ll just--” Derek can hear him gesturing to the door and walking backward. “Um, get well soon, okay?” And then he’s gone, the door banging shut behind him.

Derek squirms over onto his stomach so that he rest his forehead on his arm. He bangs his other fist on the table, denting it before dropping his hand over the side of the gurney, letting his hand dangle toward the ground. He almost wishes he felt as terrible as he did right after the battle; at least then, the physical pain was intense enough that he couldn’t think. 

***

Derek stays holed up in his house for two more days, ostensibly because he’s healing, but mostly because he’s ashamed and miserable. He’s not sure what’s worse: the way his feelings for Stiles have crept up completely against his will, or that he yelled at Stiles and hurt him when Stiles was just trying to make him feel better. The fact that Stiles was, in fact, trying to make him feel better, was apparently worried enough about Derek that he had to take a Xanax, isn’t something he can even start to wrap his mind around. (On the car ride home from Deaton’s, before his pack left him to blessed solitude, there were many passive-aggressive hints dropped about how freaked out Stiles had been, how much he’d hovered while Deaton cleaned Derek up, and who knew that anxiety and concern could stink so much. Derek doesn’t even know how they found out about anything.)

“I’m sorry,” Derek says as soon as Stiles picks up the phone.

“Oh, whatever, it’s no big deal,” Stiles says. Even over the phone Derek can hear the forced casualness, the obvious lie.

“I wasn’t myself,” Derek says.

Stiles laughs, sounding a little bit more normal. “Dude, yes you were. You being inexplicably grumpy and rude is definitely when you are your truest self.”

Derek sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, it’s freaking me out.” Stiles is eating chips or something, because the crinkling of the bag and his chewing are both loud over the phone. Derek tries to picture him, probably leaning far enough back in his desk chair that the front chair legs are off the ground, staring up at the ceiling, crumbs on his chin and the front of his shirt.

“I want to see you,” Derek says. Maybe he’s lost his ability to verbally hedge around what he wants. Maybe Stiles has reduced him to only ever speaking in blunt, declarative sentences, something that Stiles will inevitably make fun of him for.

“Cool.” Stiles sounds kind of surprised, which makes Derek hate himself a little bit. “I, um, can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually in the middle of a homework assignment that I legitimately have to finish tonight or I’m completely screwed. And if I don’t get enough sleep tonight for this chem exam tomorrow, I’m double completely screwed. So tonight’s not great. Tomorrow?”

It’s going to drive Derek crazy that he can’t know for sure whether or not Stiles is lying, not over the phone. “Sure.”

“Great! Great. See you after school.” 

“Okay,” Derek says, waiting for Stiles to hang up. He doesn’t. There’s a pause, and Derek can hear chewing.

“Hey, Derek? Um. I’m sorry, too. For talking too much, and bothering you while you were healing. I was just--I’m glad you’re okay.”

Derek swallows. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Stiles is quiet for several long moments, before he finally breathes out sharply and says “Okay bye” and hangs up.

Derek makes Erica, Isaac and Boyd go on an overnight, long-distance run with him, to stretch their stamina--they’ve never experienced how long they can run without stopping. They hate it and complain loudly about how they have school in the morning, but they also need to learn how well they can function with much less sleep than humans require. Derek has been so distracted by Stiles lately that he hasn’t been a good Alpha, hasn’t pushed them, hasn’t objected when they started getting too comfortable with them. Neither he nor they are powerful enough yet to be comfortable; they might never be.

Running makes him think about disappearance, and how much he used to want exactly that. Leaving and finding another life, or no life at all. He can’t find that desire anymore, but wishes he could.

***

Stiles shows up on Derek’s doorstep, hours before Derek was expecting to hear from him. Derek isn’t ready. He just barely showered, and his hair is still wet, and he’s barefoot.

“My dad is sick and working from home today, so my house is a no-go,” Stiles says, hitching his backpack higher on his shoulder. “And I skipped my last period because fuck Mrs. Lake, that’s why.”

Derek steps aside so that Stiles can come in. “You don’t have to skip school to come see me.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Stop worrying about the corruption of my integrity or whatever. I can see how you might think I was a perfect student before Scott got the bite, considering how out-of-this-world brilliant I am, but this is not my first truancy rodeo.”

Derek raises his eyebrows. “You’re telling me that the events of the past year, which have made Scott fail all his classes, haven’t affected your focus on school at all.”

Stiles eyes him. “Dude, pick your battles.”

Derek doesn’t even know why he’s trying to talk about Stiles’ classes. Having Stiles in his house, just the two of them, makes him feel uncomfortable and sweaty. “I would ask if you wanted something to drink, but I don’t have a kitchen,” he says, stupidly.

Stiles laughs. “Do you have a room with furniture? We could sit together and watch the walls crumble, or something.”

Derek takes Stiles to his futon in the bedroom. They sit down and Derek is about to start suggesting some places they could go to actually hang out when Stiles leans over and kisses him. Derek wasn’t expecting that yet and it takes him a second to get with the program and open his mouth. Their teeth bump together, and Derek feels a little overwhelmed at first because Stiles’ mouth is completely covering his and he can’t breathe. But then they adjust the angle, and he can breathe through his nose, and the slide of Stiles’ tongue starts to feel good. 

Stiles kisses Derek like he came here just for this, and he probably did, which probably shouldn’t make Derek uneasy. It’s not that it’s not enjoyable--Derek has to keep his hips subtly shifted away from Stiles’ legs so that his erection goes unnoticed. But Derek feels like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He’s right. The kisses get deeper, and Stiles’ hand slips under Derek’s shirt, his fingers skating over Derek’s ribcage. Stiles moves his mouth to suck and bite Derek’s earlobe, and Derek can feel the edges of his thoughts fuzzing out. It feels like a natural, obvious progression when Stiles’ hand moves lower to Derek’s groin, cupping his dick through his jeans. Derek groans and pushes up into it before he catches himself.

“Maybe not tonight,” Derek says, catching Stiles’ wrist and moving his hand away.

Stiles sighs and kisses Derek’s jaw, cheek, the corner of his mouth. “Sure. I wish you’d tell me why, though.”

Derek squirms. “I already told you why.”

Stiles pulls back enough to look him in the eye. “No you didn’t. You told me a bunch of vague things that didn’t exactly sound true or applicable to our situation.”

Derek looks away. “I just want to be careful.”

“See? Vague.” Stiles tries to climb into Derek’s lap, and Derek doesn’t know if Stiles thinks he’s being cute or what, but it makes the conversation ten times more awkward for Derek, who leans back and away until he’s propped on his elbows.

“I’m not saying we need to jump in the sack immediately. I just think we could, you know, explore.” Stiles’ teeth flash white in the dusky room when he grins. He works his hand beneath Derek’s shirt again, tugging up the fabric and leaning over to kiss Derek’s nipple.

Derek tries to relax and enjoy it, but he can’t make his muscles go any less rigid. To his credit, Stiles doesn’t try to go near Derek’s dick again, seemingly content to be mouthing Derek’s nipple, but Derek still prods at his shoulder until he stops and leans away. “I’m not sure ‘exploring’ is a great idea.”

Stiles groans. “I’m getting that, but why _not?_ ”

“I just--can you get off of me?” It’s getting difficult to talk or think with Stiles’ hips straddling his.

Stiles rolls his eyes and stands. “I don’t get you. Half the time you’re barely tolerating my presence, half the time you _don’t_ tolerate my presence, and then half the time you’re texting and calling and kissing me or getting horribly maimed on my behalf. And yes, I know that’s too many halves, so not the point.”

“I’m sorry. I--want this,” Derek says, well aware that he doesn’t sound very convincing. He stands, coming closer to Stiles. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You’ve said that already.” Stiles doesn’t smell turned on anymore, just frustrated. “I don’t get why you can’t give me a straight answer to a very simple question. Just finish this sentence for me: ‘I don’t want to have sex with Stiles because ________.”

The pushiness is beginning to get on Derek’s nerves, and he glares a little bit. “Fine. I don’t want to have sex with Stiles because Stiles is only sixteen and I am not.”

Derek had expected Stiles to look hurt, but instead Stiles rolls his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “Jesus fucking Christ, I cannot believe that that is legitimately your hang-up. I thought you were hand-wringing about my age in the beginning just for propriety’s sake.”

Derek crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m not joking.”

“I know you’re not, that’s what makes this so stupid. I mean, look at the crazy shitstorm that is our lives! I have been through way more in the past year than most people experience throughout their lives, let alone by the time they’re sixteen, not to mention the things we’ve been through _together,_ but you think I’m too immature for sex?”

"No, its not about maturity, its--" Derek stops, at a loss. Stiles has him wound up and feeling like he'll never find the right words to win this. "You're just young, you're vulnerable, and it wouldn't be fair to you."

"Oh my god, don't patronize me. That's such a tautology argument, like 'the reason you can't have underage sex is because you're underage." Stiles glares, like he's just now realizing that Derek can't be logic-ed out of this. "You're just afraid."

"Yes, yes I am. I'm scared of hurting you." Nothing about this conversation is making him feel good. Stiles' mulish insistence that his age doesn't matter just reminds Derek that he's young, and that if Derek were really a good person, he'd never have kissed Stiles in the first place.

Stiles throws up his hands. “Okay, then why don’t you tell me what’s so dangerous about having sex with someone older? And if you say anything about being a werewolf I will punch you, because you know that’s not what I mean.”

The words stick in Derek’s throat. All he can think about is Kate, and he wishes he were anywhere but in this house right now. “It could be used against you, or you could get taken advantage of, or manipulated--”

“God, stop it!” Stiles shouts, and Derek stiffens. “Don’t you remember being my age? Were you an incapable child without a brain when _you_ were sixteen, because that’s what you’re treating me like!”

“I remember,” Derek says. 

“Yeah, of course you remember, because it’s not like 22 is that much older than 16!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derek says, feeling oddly numb. This house is smelling more and more like smoke and flesh and bones, and Derek can feel the walls closing in around him. “Just stop.”

Stiles is pacing and shooting glares at Derek intermittently. “It’s not just about the sex, okay? You clearly don’t even want to do this at all, which makes me feel shitty and like I should be grateful for anything you decide to throw my way. And that’s not fucking fair because you know, I’m a smart guy and I feel pretty confident in my decision-making skills, and I’m not afraid of doing this with you!” 

“Maybe you don’t get it now,” Derek says, but it’s futile, he knows it’s futile. “But when you’re older--”

“Shut up,” Stiles snarls at him. “What makes you think you know what I need better than I do? Why are you the _expert_ \--”

“Because it happened to me when I was your age! Because Kate got to me when I was sixteen, when I was just like you, and I thought I could trust her, I thought I loved her!”

Stiles takes a couple steps back, and Derek dimly registers that he’s yelling. Stiles blinks, and for a second Derek hates him completely for being so slow to understand this when he’s so quick to comprehend anything else. “Kate--Argent?”

“Did you think she did it without help? An established family like ours--we had managed to stay safe and alive for centuries, and you think one girl killed them all without help?” Derek gets a sick satisfaction out of watching the impact of each word play out on Stiles’ face, of seeing how much he doesn’t want to be hearing this. “How do you think she was able to get in here undetected, at exactly the right time when everyone would be here, when they would all be vulnerable? How do you think she got close enough?”

“So--so she what, seduced you?” Stiles says, desperately trying to keep up, and Derek laughs.

“She let me fuck her, and then she burned my family alive,” Derek says, and saying it out loud makes something shatter in his lungs. “I was sixteen, I was your age, you fucking idiot, and she was the only thing I wanted, and--” 

Derek drops to a crouch, hands in his hair. Stiles is saying something, but Derek can’t make out the words over the roaring in his ears. He remembers lying in bed with her that first time, he remembers her electrocuting him in front of Allison last year, he remembers the congealed blood that stuck to her cheek long after Peter sliced her throat, and why does it all have to still be in his mind, why does it have to be so fucking vivid when he’s forgotten what some of his cousins’ faces looked like. 

Stiles is moving closer to him, crouching down with a hand hovering over Derek’s shoulder. “She was evil,” he says. “It wasn’t your fault--”

“Don’t,” Derek says, and it comes out as more of a roar than he intends, because his teeth and claws have come out. “Don’t you get it? They would all still be here if it weren’t for me, if it weren’t for things I did willingly.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Stiles mumbles. His hand touches Derek’s shoulder, and Derek realizes that he’s shaking all over.

“I’ve never told anyone, never told Laura that I even knew her, let alone what I did.” In a twisted sort of way, this confession feels the best to finally admit: that not only is he a murderer, he’s a coward who couldn’t handle the thought of Laura knowing the truth.

Derek wants Stiles to say something, anything, to start talking so that Derek can stop, but Stiles has gone mute, and Derek--

“She didn’t even have to try. From the first time I saw her I was gone, and I told her anything, everything she asked, I never stopped to question why she wanted to know, I thought that we--” Derek has enough residual pride to choke down the rest, because Stiles doesn’t need to hear about the daydreams Derek had about spending the rest of his life with Kate. Stiles doesn’t need to hear any of this, Derek never should have started talking, never should have let Stiles in to begin with.

“You should leave,” Derek says. Stiles takes his hand back.

“I’m not sure I should,” he says. “Derek, I--you don’t look okay.”

Derek can't look at him. "Go. Please."

Stiles' hand jerks like he wants to reach out again. "Do you want me to call someone in your pack?"

Derek has to bite back laughter, because Stiles is trying to put put him on werewolf suicide watch. It's farcical. It makes him want to puke. "No."

Stiles says Derek's name again, and Derek notices the pleading in his voice. It's obvious how scared Stiles is, and Derek feels helpless to do anything about it. All Derek can think about is how desperate he is to get away before Stiles can witness any more of this. He grinds his knuckles against his eyes until he can focus on the pressure and the pain.

"Go, just go," Derek doesn't have any other words in him, he can't explain or persuade or be nice or be human. And Stiles leaves, stumbling once before his steps quicken and fade and the Jeep's engine roars to life, and Derek stands up and flees out the back. He goes to the woods and runs until he can't.

***

Are you ok?

Never mind dumb question. Do you want to talk? My dads not home you could come over and I'll make you soup

Never mind dumb offer

I'm sorry if I'm a bad listener

You've got me kind of worried. I guess you prob need space but just let me know that you're not dying or having a nervous breakdown.

Sorry it's my fault that Erica showed up at your door, just thought someone should check on you.

Sorry that I'm bugging you.

Come on man it's been two days. Just give me a sign of life.

Ok I guess I just should wait for you to call so I'm gonna do that. Just wish I knew that you were ok.

****

When Derek does eventually call, Stiles comes to pick him up without complaining that it's one in the morning on a school night. Nor does he say a word about how Derek had a meltdown and violated any emotional boundaries they had, then disappeared for three days. Derek would prefer to be yelled at.

Stiles doesn't take him back to the underage drinking spot in the woods; instead they end up in the parking lot of a public park, where the light from street lamps makes both their faces look sickly and yellow.

Stiles cuts the engine and drums his fingers on the steering wheel. He glances at Derek out of the corner of his eye and then looks back to the front, then back to Derek again. Derek fixes his gaze on a line of trees in the distance and doesn't move.

"So," Stiles says, clearing his throat. "We spend a lot of our time arguing with each other. Have you noticed that?" The corner of his mouth twitches up in a half-smile, like he doesn't know what other expression to make.

Derek swallows. "Yes."

"Why do you think that is? I mean, why..." Stiles trails off, and Derek doesn't bother to say that he doesn’t have an answer. Stiles chooses a different line of questioning. "You really never told anyone that stuff before?"

Derek lets the claws of his right hand come out and presses them against his thigh, not hard enough to draw blood. "No."

"Just me, huh?"

"Just you."

“I’m sorry that the one guy you chose to tell your big secret handled it so badly. God, I’m so sorry.” Derek opens his mouth to tell Stiles that it’s fine, but Stiles talks over him, his voice cracking. “It’s just, all we’ve done is make out a few times and yell at each other, you’re not--I didn’t know I was anything to you. And then you told me the most traumatic thing I’ve ever heard of, and I have no idea what I did to deserve you trusting me with it.”

Derek waits for Stiles to continue, to tell him that it’s too much, to finally break off this thing between them that never should have started. But Stiles just sits there, staring out the window. Derek feels an uncharacteristic urge to fill the silence. 

“If you want to stop doing... whatever it is we’ve been doing. I’ll understand,” he says. 

“What! I didn’t say I wanted to stop, oh my god. Wait, do _you_ want to stop?”

“No,” Derek says, too quickly. “But--you know what kind of person I am now. You know that I got my family killed.”

Stiles’ mouth hangs open. “You--you really think that,” he says, and he sounds like he’s about to be sick. “You believe that the fire was your fault.”

Derek blinks at him. “It was.”

Stiles takes in a deep, shuddery breath. “You were sixteen. There was no way you could have known, or stopped her, or--I’ve met Kate Argent, okay, she was a ruthless, trained killer. And you--you just fell for the wrong person.”

Stiles touches him, fingers on the back of Derek’s wrist. His voice is all kindness and Derek doesn’t want it. “ _You’re_ sixteen.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, and after hearing about what Kate did to you, you win that argument hands down. I will completely understand if you don’t want to do anything until I’m 80.”

Derek surprises himself by laughing. “Really.”

“Really! I really--” Stiles stops, and clears his throat. His cheeks are red. “I care about you.”

Derek holds himself very still. “I care about you, too.”

Stiles leans back, away from Derek and scrubs a hand over his hair. “Great. So that’s established. Good for us.”

“Yep,” Derek says, and they stare at each other. 

Derek has never wanted to tell someone everything before. (No, that’s a lie: obviously he wanted to tell Kate everything, he _did_ tell her everything. But since Kate--no one.) Right now he has enough control over himself to keep from spilling his guts the way he did the other night, but the words are still there, pushing against the back of his teeth. Words about everything, not just his past; he wants to tell Stiles about his fears about his pack, the worrying noises that his car has started to make, and how much he enjoys sitting in the passenger seat and watching Stiles drive. Derek wants Stiles to hear and accept it all.

It’s terrifying.

Stiles breaks the stare first, looking out the front window. He swallows and traces the brand logo in his steering wheel, his long fingers flexing. The need to fidget is coming off him so strongly that Derek can almost smell it. “Have I thanked you yet, for telling me?”

“Thanked me?”

Stiles nods, pressing his lips together and puckering them out with his breath. “Yeah. You didn’t have to, you could’ve just told me to fuck off. But you didn’t, and it’s just--” Stiles raises one shoulder and drops it, a weird gesture that Derek doesn’t know if you could call a shrug or what. He meets Derek’s eyes again. “Thanks. Thanks for trusting me.”

Derek hasn’t looked away once and he doesn’t now. He should tell Stiles that he doesn’t trust him; he should tell Stiles he’s mistaken. Instead he stutters. 

“I’m--I don’t--you’re welcome,” he says, and Stiles’ lips start curving upward, Derek can tell that Stiles is about to start laughing at him. Derek cuts him off by lunging forward and kissing him.

Stiles grabs the front of Derek’s jacket, bunching his hands in the leather. Derek pushes forward until he can’t anymore, crowding into Stiles’ space until the back of Stiles’ head bumping the window. He expects Stiles to push him back and demand more breathing room, but Stiles just pulls him in. Derek slides his tongue into Stiles’ mouth and Stiles lets him; Derek gets a hand under Stiles’ t-shirt and covers his ribs with his palm, and Stiles lets him. Stiles keeps his hands on Derek’s chest, roaming over the fabric of Derek’s shirt and up over Derek’s shoulders, his thumb barely brushing Derek’s neck. 

They keep kissing until Stiles’ heartbeat gets too loud and fast in Derek’s ear, until Stiles’ breath goes uneven. Derek himself is completely undone: he’s painfully hard and he’s sure his eyes are glinting red. If they keep doing this, it’s going to stop being fun unless clothes come off.

Stiles doesn’t question it when Derek pulls away, just gives him a goofy, exhausted grin before starting the engine. They drive home mostly in silence, with Stiles humming along to the radio turned down low. As Stiles pulls up to the front of Derek’s house, he surprises Derek by reaching over and grabbing his hand. He squeezes it and holds on for a second or two, barely long enough for Derek to squeeze back, before letting it go.

“We’re not just gonna pretend this never happened tomorrow, are we?” Stiles asks. “I mean, we can admit that this is, like, a _thing_ now. That we’re a thing. Right?”

Derek is smiling; it’s mostly involuntary. “Right.”

“See you tomorrow then, I hope.” Stiles gives him a small smile in return, and Derek gets out of the car before they can start kissing again.

***

“Why didn’t you tell us you and Stiles were going steady?” Erica follows her greeting by throwing a Snickers bar at his head, which Derek catches. 

Derek glares. He’s not sure if the candy bar is a gift or if he should toss it back to her. And he wasn’t expecting her to materialize in his living room in the middle of the day. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“It’s Memorial Day, duh” Erica says, more smug than the occasion calls for. Behind her, Derek can hear Isaac and Boyd getting out of the car and walking up to the front door, discussing something from their chemistry class. “So you and Stilinski. I knew it.”

“No, you didn’t.” Derek’s hungry and he needs something to do to avoid eye contact, so he starts working on the Snickers.

“I knew you guys were weird about each other, I just didn’t realize it was sexual tension.” 

“Yeah, I’ve had him pegged as in love with Scott since Junior High,” Isaac pipes in from the doorway. “I’m kidding, that was a joke,” he hastily adds when Derek stiffens.

“This isn’t up for discussion. It’s not pack business,” Derek says, but it’s hard to be stern when you’re eating chocolate, and by now even Boyd is smirking at him.

“We’re just happy for you,” Boyd says, a sincere hand over his heart. “And we hope that getting seduced by Stiles will make you less grumpy to be around. And we all want that, so: pack business.”

“Shut up,” Derek says. “If you don’t have school today, then we’ll train. You all need to work on self-defense.”

“Aw, we were just teasing!” says Isaac, all three of them protesting as Derek ushers them outside. 

Derek's not sure he wants to know what Stiles told them (if he told them anything; they could've just figured it out). Actually, he definitely wants to know, and more than that he wants to know what Stiles has told Scott--he just doesn't want to ask.

He tries to imagine Stiles discussing whatever he has with his friends--and is he even friends with Derek's pack, when they're in school? He has no idea--but can't picture it at all, and thinking about it makes him extremely nervous. Despite the unfortunate amount of time Derek has had to spend on the high school grounds since he moved back to Beacon Hills, Derek has no idea what Stiles' life consists of on a daily basis, no idea what his school day is like when there's no supernatural threat to interrupt things. 

And what does Stiles do with his friends, other than werewolf business? What do he and Scott (and Lydia, and Allison, shit, Derek sometimes forgets that Stiles' social circle includes someone Derek has tried to kill and an Argent) talk about? The picture Derek can't shake is a lunch table full of Stiles and his friends all talking about him, not positively, and the mental image makes him want to be buried in the ground.

When he and Stiles meet up that evening, Stiles tells Derek that he would've called earlier but he spent the day off studying with Scott. Derek manages to resist asking Stiles what he's told Scott about them, but the question squirms around inside his head. Derek cared about Scott's opinion before because he wanted Scott to be a part of his pack, but this isn't the same thing. Wanting to be listened to and followed is somehow different than wanting someone's approval.

Stiles is even more fidgety than usual when Derek shows up at his doorstep. They last about five minutes hanging around the living room before Stiles jumps up, as if sitting still on the couch had become intolerable, and asks Derek if he wants to go see a movie or something. 

"Sure," Derek says, shrugging, but Stiles fixes him with an intent look. 

"How long has it been since you saw a movie in theaters?"

Derek scratches at the back of his neck. "A while." Five years, give or take.

"Uh-huh." Stiles is looking at him like he heard what Derek didn't say. "It’s gonna be my job to integrate you back into the world, isn't it."

Derek gives him a halfhearted glare, but Stiles just slaps him on the knee and then offers him a hand, pulling Derek to his feet. "And since you're so out-of-step with today's cinema, I'll choose the movie."

Stiles chooses the latest Judd Apatow film, and insists on buying popcorn even though Derek's not hungry and Stiles just ate. They also get to their seats way too early, which means sitting through all the quizzes and ads that get shown before the previews. The rest of the meager audience (this movie apparently came out a month ago) doesn't start trickling in until after the previews start. Stiles puts his feet up on the seat in front of him and loudly critiques each Hollywood knowledge quiz. They go through most of the popcorn before the movie's even started.

"See, don't you feel more like a real person now?" Stiles says, in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely.

"You don't have to go to the movies regularly to be a real person."

"Yeah, in theory. But you know what I mean."

Derek steals some popcorn out of Stiles' palm. "Yeah."

The movie makes Derek laugh a few times, but when he thinks of it later, he mostly remembers Stiles' running commentary in his ear and the bouncing restlessness of his knees and elbows. Derek knows that Stiles thinks he needs things like this to be more of a person and less of a lone werewolf, but as far as Derek's concerned, the movie theater is beside the point.

***

A week later, Derek has to come to the rescue when Stiles and Scott end up running from the cops. They'd been investigating a new clan of hunters that had taken up residence in a half-finished suburban development on the edge of town, but it turned out to be a trap, and the police cut them off from the route back to Stiles' Jeep. Derek had been loitering in the area, despite Stiles' insistence that they didn't need him to. 

"Don't say I told you so," Scott hollers over the sirens as he throws himself into the back seat. Stiles flails his way into the front, and Derek takes off before the door is shut.

"I don't think I need to," Derek says. Both off their heart beats are thumping loud and fast in his ears, but he can tell that Stiles' is more from excitement than fear. Which is fucking stupid: he doesn't have werewolf speed to outrun the cops if cornered, and he definitely can't heal if the cops were to start shooting.

"You should be more careful," Derek says. The lights from the cop cars are getting further away I'm the rearview mirror, and Stiles is starting to grin like everything is already fine.

"Pfft, it's just a misunderstanding, those guys probably babysat for me as a kid. And hey, now we know there are definitely hunters here!"

"Just because they work with your father doesn't mean they'll hesitate to shoot," Derek snaps. He forgets sometimes that Stiles has grown up without any fear or anxiety around the police, that he associates cops with backyard barbecues and at worst, getting grounded. He's never been a murder suspect.

"I know that you feel protective of me, and that's why you're impugning the reputation of our town's police force." Stikes grins and reaches out, patting Derek's shoulder in a gesture that's probably meant as affectionate, but makes Derek feel deeply awkward with Scott in the back.

“I’m serious, you’re lucky I was here,” Derek says, but it’s clear that the protesting is pointless. Stiles has already moved past the potentially life-threatening situation, and besides, Derek doesn’t actually feel like fighting about this.

“We could’ve handled it,” Scott says, and when Derek meets his eyes in the rearview mirror, they flash yellow. It could just be the flash of headlights from a passing car, or it could be protective anger. Derek’s not sure. He drops Scott off first.

“I think that you should definitely take us to the Wendy’s drive-thru before you drop me off,” Stiles says when Scott’s out of the car, and Derek rolls his eyes but obliges. They eat in the parking lot, Stiles dipping every last one of his fries in his frosty, and by the time they’re finished, it’s late--just past midnight. Derek knows that the only reason Sheriff Stilinski is fine with his son not being home yet is that he thinks Stiles is playing video games at Scott’s house.

Thoughts like that still make Derek wonder if Stiles wouldn’t be better off if Derek left him alone. He remembers so vividly what he acted like when he first met Scott and Stiles, and he knows he thought nothing of breaking into their bedrooms and intimidating them to get what he wanted. It never occurred to him that they had parents, curfews, and lives that were drastically different from the one he was living--the only thing on his mind had been keeping Scott from losing control and keeping the alpha from killing. 

But of course he failed to save anyone that Peter was bent on killing, and Derek can’t kid himself that he’s ever been a great help to Scott. The only slightly valuable role he’s ever played in Scott’s life was something for Scott to push against, a practice villain for Scott to stand up to. Maybe in some small way, resisting Derek’s authority as an alpha prepared Scott to face down Matt, the kanima, Gerard Argent. That’s more than Derek managed to do for his own pack, instead splintering them and turning them into vulnerable targets. And if they came back to him, if they’re still together now, Derek’s not sure if that’s as much of an improvement for them as it is for him.

And what has he done for Stiles, besides putting him in danger and confusing his loyalties? If Derek were Stiles’ best friend from childhood, he wouldn’t approve of their involvement, either.

Stiles’ voice breaks into Derek’s train of thought, which is just as well, because those circles always begin and end at self-hatred. “Wanna come back to my house and make out for a while? And yes, I realize that I just ate a burger with onions on it, and I plan on thoroughly brushing my teeth as soon as I get home.” 

Stiles speaks quickly and uses too many words as an attempt to camouflage his nervousness at making the proposition. But it’s clear in the way the words burst suddenly out, as if he’d been rehearsing in his head before saying anything, in addition to his heart rate. Derek appreciates Stiles trying to be matter-of-fact about whatever it is they’re doing, even if it makes Derek want to shy away. 

Also, Derek is horrified to realize he might be blushing. “No,” he says, and Stiles blinks at him. “I mean--it’s late. Another time. But thanks.”

Stiles sighs, balling up the trash from his fast-food order. “You’re welcome? If it’s so very much past your bedtime, you should probably take me home now.”

Derek wants to say that that wasn’t what he meant; just because it’s late doesn’t mean that he wants their time to be over right this second, but upon thinking about it, he doesn’t know how else Stiles could have interpreted that. He drives Stiles home unhappy with himself and without much of an idea for what to say to make anything better.

Stiles moves to get out of the car as soon as Derek cuts the engine, but Derek catches his arm, keeping him in place. Stiles seems mollified when Derek kisses him goodbye, and a rush of energy floods Derek’s chest which makes it difficult to not say what’s on his mind.

“How much does Scott know?”

“About us?” Stiles pulls back slightly, enough to look Derek in the eye. Derek’s hand is still cupping the back of his neck. 

“Well, um. I told him about it the first time you kissed me, which... maybe you didn’t want me to do that then? Sorry in retrospect? And I think he’s maybe guessed about some of the rest, he was there when I was freaking out when you were all nearly-dying and stuff, and--I guess I’ve been kinda avoiding thinking about it, because I feel guilty for not telling him because we tell each other everything and if he’s figured it out when I haven’t told him then his feelings might be hurt. I don’t know.” Stiles scrubs a hand over his head and leans further away, wincing. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, what should I tell him?”

Derek trails his hand from Stiles’ neck to his shoulder, trying to be reassuring. “You can tell him what you want to tell him. He’s your best friend.”

Stiles stills and looks at Derek for a long moment before speaking. “You want--can I tell him we’re together?” Derek nods.

***

“Don’t jump on the bed like that, it’s loud,” Derek hisses without really thinking about it, and grimaces when Stiles, rightfully, laughs at him.

“My dad is not going to come marching in on us because he hears one little creak of a bedspring, a bedspring that could easily have creaked because I threw myself dramatically onto my bed in despair at my singlehood--which I definitely used to do all the time, so it’s not going to set off any Dad alarms.”

“Still,” Derek grumbles, and Stiles just rolls his eyes, still giggling.

It’s taken a long time for Derek to feel comfortable or relaxed in Stiles’ house, and relaxing when the Sheriff is home is another matter entirely. Stiles swears that his dad never, ever enters his room without knocking first, and the office is downstairs so his dad is either working or sleeping and he can sleep through anything, so he’s not going to notice that someone else is in Stiles’ room as long as there’s no shouting or whatever, so it’s totally fine for Derek to be there while his dad is also in the house--Derek’s not sure about that, but he’s been going along with it against his better judgment. He tries to keep his visits to whenever the Sheriff works nights, but that’s usually only once a week, and the thought of having Stiles over to his house still makes him think of the way he broke down the last time Stiles was there.

“We can whisper if it makes you feel better,” Stiles stage-whispers to him. The Sheriff is downstairs; Derek can hear his heartbeat, steady and stable, and if he had to hazard a guess, he would say that the Sheriff is completely focused on his work and hasn’t been hearing anything unusual from Stiles’ room. Stiles is lying next to him on the bed, not pacing around the room--although even if he were, somehow the floorboards in this room never creak.

“Shut up,” Derek says. “I’m not saying that’s necessary.”

“Really? Because I’ll bet I could keep up the whispering longer than you,” Stiles whispers. “I’ll bet you a dollar, let’s start now.”

“No,” Derek says, speaking up a little to emphasize how much he’s not playing along with this. Stiles’ hand is resting on Derek’s chest, and when he laughs, he drums his fingers on Derek’s breastbone.

“I guess I don’t worry about him catching us while we’re here,” Stiles says, shrugging. “I mean, when he gave me The Talk, it included this whole bit about how he wasn’t going to come into my room anymore, it was my responsibility to do my own laundry and my own sheets, and he wanted me to have my privacy and all that.” Stiles smirks. “I think he was sort of terrified by the onset of puberty.”

Derek nods. “My parents were always really careful about giving us plenty of privacy, even though there were always tons of people in our house.”

It just slipped out--Derek hadn’t meant to bring up anything about his family or his past, especially not so casually. Stiles glances at him, and Derek swallows, tries to keep his body language relaxed.

“When my mom was alive, she never knocked first. And she was super nosy, about like, anything I did with friends at school, anything I did on the computer, all that... stuff.” Stiles’ voice is stiffer, more careful than it was a few seconds ago, and Derek recognizes the trade Stiles is trying to make: a wound for a wound, so that Derek’s not left as the only one vulnerable. 

It makes it possible for Derek to keep talking. “I had two brothers, but they were a lot older, Laura was closer to my age. And Peter and my cousins--they lived with us for a while, when we were all children. I think there was money trouble, and the house was big enough, so--so they were there a lot. My grandma lived there, too.”

“That’s a lot of people. It must have been nice, growing up with all those other kids around.” Stiles’ voice is dead even, lacking any inflection or tone to imply that he’s commenting on anything other than the exact words coming out of Derek’s mouth. Somehow it makes it easier to pretend they’re not avoiding the loss hovering at the edge of every word spoken.

“It was. It’s--it can be hard to make friends when you’re a little kid and a werewolf. But they were always around, so I never felt--” _lonely,_ but Derek doesn’t say it. He stares up at the ceiling, keeping his face as blank as possible. Stiles spreads his fingers out on Derek’s chest, the tips of his fingers pressing lightly into skin. It’s a reassuring weight.

“I was so hyper as a kid, my teachers hated me and most of the other kids couldn’t roll with it,” Stiles says. “I didn’t really have any friends until Scott and I met in second grade.”

Derek snorts. “Scott kept up with you.”

“Yeah, and he gave the teachers another target to yell at.” Stiles smirks. “We were total assholes in elementary school, man. The worst.”

Derek can only imagine. “Laura was the hyper one, when we were little. I was a good kid, but she would get me involved in whatever trouble she was getting into. And she’d poke me in class until we started fighting and then the teacher would get mad at me.”

“Such injustices are common in elementary school classrooms everywhere, sadly.” Somehow, since they’ve been talking, Stiles has shifted closer to him on the bed. He’s up on his side, facing Derek, with his thigh just barely brushing Derek’s leg. Derek can feel Stiles’ breath against his ear.

“We weren’t as close when she got to high school. She was actually really popular, and I don’t remember her having any boyfriends, but there were always guys interested. I remember she was always going to school dances, even ones at other schools. And I had my own friends, too, by that point, so we just--I don’t know. We stopped being so attached at the hip.” 

Derek could stop talking now; most of him wants to. Nothing good can come of following the story any further. Oddly, Stiles’ presence makes him continue, but not because he feels any pressure to do so, exactly the opposite: Stiles is looking at a point past Derek’s shoulder, his face and his breathing relaxed and his hand still resting easily on Derek’s chest. He’s neither pushy nor impatient, so unlike his usual approach to everything. It helps.

“I thought about telling Laura when I met Kate. I wanted to, I wanted to introduce her to everyone, but I guess I just... I wanted something to keep to myself, something that was only mine.”

Stiles takes in a sharp breath, the only sign of tension he’s let slip so far. Derek’s mouth is dry, and it feels like his tongue is swelling to push against his teeth and keep him silent. 

“If I had told her... if she’d met Kate. I don’t think Kate would have been able to do what she did.”

Stiles is quiet for a long moment before he says, “Or maybe Kate would have killed her, too. There’s no way to know.”

All Derek can do is nod. Stiles moves in even closer, resting his head on Derek’s shoulder. 

“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” Stiles says, his voice far quieter than it was when he was stage-whispering. “But how did you meet Kate? How did it start?”

Derek considers the question. He knows Stiles won’t press any further if he says he doesn’t want to keep talking. Or he could just leave, he could be out the window before Stiles could even muster the breath to object; he could leave and never find himself in this situation again. 

“She was a babysitter for my friend’s little brother,” he says, his voice distant, a far-off echo even in his own ears. “I came over to pick him up for lacrosse practice once, and the three of us hung out for a while. I was--it was really flattering when she seemed to like me more than my friend.”

Slowly, he tells Stiles the whole story from start to finish. Stiles doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t comment about any of it, and he never takes his hand away, keeping himself there as an anchor to the present. 

***

“Put those away,” Derek says, struggling to keep his voice human and non-threatening even though his features are still wolfish.

“Like hell,” says the hunter--Daphne?--and doesn’t move her guns from where they’re trained on Derek and Scott, respectively.

“We’re here to help, we’re not going to hurt you, we swear.”

Daphne seems to react better to Scott’s voice, possibly because Scott is morphing back to human and has the good fortune not to be slashed to ribbons, unlike Derek. She narrows her eyes at Scott but lowers one of her guns--Derek still has the other one pointed in his face.

“We came here to take out the harpy nest, same as you did, and we can work together on this,” Scott says, somehow managing to sound urgent and soothing at the same time. Derek slumps to the ground clutching his wounded arm to his chest, in too much pain to worry much about being held at gun point. The leader of the harpies (their queen?) had done her best to rip his arm out of its socket, and there are deep, grisly gashes running from his elbow to his shoulder.

“You’re werewolves,” Daphne says. She stiffens when Derek snarls at her for stating the obvious.

“Yes, but we’re good werewolves,” Scott says, moving in between them as if hiding Derek from view will support his point. 

The three of them are clustered together at the bottom of a shallow ravine, having tumbled down it when the harpies successfully divided the group. Isaac and Erica were driven in the other direction, away from Derek and Scott but hopefully away from the swarm of armed hunters as well; Derek hadn't realized that one of the hunters had been separated from her group until he rolled to a stop and looked up to find the muzzle of a gun in his face.

Daphne has leaves in her hair, and she looks young--older than Scott, but probably only just out of high school. She's holding her guns like she knows what she's doing, though. She was probably raised in a hunting family, same as Kate.

"Could you please put the teeth away?" Scott asks him. "The claws, too. We're all friends here." The last sentence is directed to Daphne.

"What's the point? She'll still know I can rip her throat out in a heartbeat," Derek says, returning Scott's glare with one of his own. 

"Harder to bite me with a bullet between your eyes," Daphne says between gritted teeth.There's no way that her hunter friends aren't giving orders right this second to take out the unexpected werewolves in addition to the harpy nest. Daphne must know that.

"Look, ignore him and listen to me. We all want the same thing, and considering that we've never seen you until now, I'm guessing that taking us out wasn't a big priority for you before." Scott holds up his hands, looking for all the world like an earnest human boy who just wants to help. "We have a better chance if we all work together. We'll even follow your lead--"

"No, you idiot, we can't trust her!" Derek grabs Scott's shoulder, but Scott shrugs him off.

"Could you stop working against me for one second?" Scott says, glaring. "You're making things way worse than they have to be!"

"If you think for one second--"

"Stiles would want you to play nice here," Scott blurts out.

Derek stops short. "What?"

"If Stiles were here, he'd say that the best thing would be for you to tone down the aggression and work with the hunter on this." Scott looks incredibly pleased with himself, the same look he always gets when he has a good idea.

Derek has a horrible feeling that his ears might be turning red. His claws are gone and his features are back to looking totally human. "I don't--that's not fair."

Scott folds his arms over his chest. "You know I'm right. Listen to reason, okay? We have a better chance at taking out the harpies and getting out of here if we have a hunter working with us instead of against us. And Stiles would totally back me up on this if we were here."

"But he's not," Derek says, but it's a token protest and they both know it. He's pretty sure that Scott is right about Stiles' theoretical opinion on this, and although Derek is not basing his decision on that, it makes him hesitate to trust his initial instinct not to trust his hunter.

"I can text him the situation and see what he thinks of it," Scott says, starting to reach for his phone.

"Shut up," Derek says. "That's not necessary."

"You guys are kind of making assumptions about how much I'm willing to work with you on this," Daphne says dryly. But the gun that used to be leveled at Derek's head is mostly lowered, and she's put the other one away.

"We can help you get back with the rest of your people if you can give us cover fire. It makes sense for us to work together against them."

Scott's already won the argument, and Daphne nods her head, mollified. Derek can see that she's starting to shake, the adrenaline flooding out of her. They all need to take a minute to breathe before clawing their way up the side of the ravine and going after the nest again. Derek grabs Scott's elbow and drags him to the side, out of Daphne's hearing.

"What the hell was that about," Derek says. His initial dumbstruck feeling upon hearing Stiles get brought up has given way to anger. 

Scott yanks his arm away. "What? I was right, you know. About what he'd think."

"Why bring Stiles up at all? Its not relevant."

Scott shrugs. "It's kinda relevant. You are dating him."

Derek immediately regrets starting this conversation. It’s suddenly difficult to speak and he wants to go back to avoiding this conversation forever. 

"So he told you."

The corners of Scott’s mouth pull down, and his shoulders hunch up as he crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re not going to give him the bite, are you? Because I swear to God, Derek, I’d kill you.”

Derek takes a step back, his breath knocked out of him. “You think I would do that?”

“Maybe--I mean, no, I guess not, but how should I know?” Scott sighs. “You’re kind of hard to predict.”

“You mean you don’t trust me.” Derek has known this. He’s known this, and hearing it again shouldn’t affect him, shouldn’t shake him like this.

“Well, you make it really hard to!” Scott says, his voice rising. “From the first time I’ve met you, you’ve been mean, you’ve tried to scare me, you’ve tried to bully me into your pack, you’ve tried to kill my friends! Stiles talks about you like--like you’re some kind of knight in shining armor, but I’ve _never_ known you like that, nothing even close!”

Scott’s hands have sprouted claws now, and he’s breathing heavily. Derek doesn't know what to say. Most of him is still reeling from the knowledge that Scott thought there was a possibility that Derek would bite Stiles--that Scott thinks he's the same as Peter.

"When we first met you said you wanted us to be brothers. But you've never even been nice to me." Scott scowls. "I hope you're nice when you're with Stiles. You'd _better_ be nice to him."

“Who’s Stiles?” Daphne asks from where she’s sitting on the hillside.

“Shut up,” Derek and Scott say in unison.

"I am nice to him. Or--I’m trying to be." Derek swallows. He doesn't know how to make this better; he's never known how to fix it when Scott's upset with him. "With you--I was just trying to keep both of us alive."

"I know. And I mean, whatever, most of that stuff was a while ago, so it's cool now, I guess. But he's my best friend, okay, and he cares about you, and if you don't care about him in the same way--"

"I do."

“Good. I want him to be happy, and I want you to be happy, too, because it would probably be better for everyone if you were less grumpy all the time.”

Derek snorts. “Thanks, I think.”

Scott gives him a thin smile. “Just don’t fuck it up.”

Derek hopes that if Scott had any idea of just how sickly terrified Derek is of fucking it up, he wouldn’t say that so cavalierly. “Right.”

“Okay,” Daphne says. “I’m glad that you guys are on buddy terms again, but can we get back to business here?”

***

The fight with the harpies ends in what could charitably be called a draw, and less charitably be called a forced retreat. It’s a small comfort to Derek that the hunters got their asses kicked, too; bullets did just as poor a job as claws. 

Because of course, of _course_ it turns out that the harpies are being controlled and protected by a wizard behind the scenes--it never seems to be as simple as just showing up and killing the monsters, even though that course of action is still what Derek defaults to every time. Just once, Derek wants to be presented with a problem that doesn’t become a grueling test of everything he is, a problem that doesn’t come perilously close to costing the lives of anyone he cares about.

And he knows that when he first moved back to Beacon Hills, his greatest desire was to live out the year, closely followed by a desire to find people who cared whether or not he lived or died. While he’s still wishing for less complicated monsters, he doesn’t go through his days believing that death is waiting for him around the corner. He’s not entirely alone anymore, either.

He starts to feel sick and terrified whenever he thinks about how things have improved, so he tries to never think about it. 

As much as Derek hates to admit it, getting Daphne on their side turned out to be a good thing, because now the rest of her clan of hunters is cooperating with them, too. And the hunters apparently make very good spies, because three days after Derek tells them the theory about a wizard controlling the harpies, they've discovered who it is.

"That can't be right," Stiles says when Daphne has finished explaining. "Librarians don't kill people."

Daphne shrugs. "Maybe Head Librarians do. I don't know what to tell you, it's definitely him. He basically has a lab for the creation of supernatural creatures in his basement."

"What kinds of creatures? Like werewolves?" Scott asks. He looks like he feels as queasy as Derek does at the thought of some mad scientist trying to make werewolves from scratch in a lab.

"No, nothing like that. I mean like hybrids, things like the harpies--merging human and animal,” Daphne says. 

“But werewolves _are_ a mix of human and animal,” Stiles says, and Derek and Scott both glare at him.

“That’s completely different,” Derek snaps. “And there’s no way any wizard could create a werewolf from a lab--you’re either born with it or you get bit.”

“Geez, sorry,” Stiles says, throwing his hands up defensively. Daphne is obviously hiding a smirk.

“Right, no werewolves,” she says, and continues to tell them everything that her team was able to find out about this Mr. Stowell. They have great schematics of the layout of his lab, as well as a decent idea of his schedule, but they still know very little about him personally or what his endgame might be.

“I can fall on that boring research sword for the sake of the group,” Stiles says, doing a terrible job of hiding his excitement at the prospect.

“My pack can stake out the library and keep him under surveillance,” Derek offers. He glances at Scott--lately Scott has been working with the pack, usually without being threatened or cajoled into it. Derek’s hoping that the trend will continue.

“I’ll keep an eye on the daycare, in case the harpies try to kidnap any more kids,” Scott says, avoiding Derek’s gaze. Derek tries not to be too disappointed that Scott won’t be working with them on the library; it’s hard to blame someone for wanting to protect small children.

The meeting breaks up, and Stiles follows Derek to his car, putting the occasional skip in his step, with both hands shoved into his back pockets. “Gimme a ride? My Jeep has been having some problems, so I came here with Scott, but I think he’s going over to Allison’s.”

Derek rolls his eyes as Stiles gets in the passenger seat. “You know you don’t need an excuse to get me to go home with you.”

Stiles huffs, fidgeting his way into fastening his seat belt. “Yeah, but I don’t want to assume. You know what happens when you assume, Derek.”

“Right.” Derek hides his smile by looking out the window. “Do you ever feel strange about being with a werewolf?”

“Dude, I’m sorry I mistakenly conflated your species with harpies. I didn’t realize it was such a faux-pas, won’t happen again.”

"I'm serious. Technically, we are different species, and you've gone most of your life thinking that my kind didn't exist. That's not weird for you?"

He can feel Stiles' eyes on him, and when Derek risks a glance over, Stiles looks thoughtful, not disturbed.

"Honestly, no. Maybe it's 'cause Scott's transformation got me used to the whole werewolves-are-real thing, but I don't really think of you as super different, even though I guess you are. I just think of you as you."

Something in Derek's stomach does a happy little flip. "Oh."

"Why? Is it weird for you to be hooking up with a human?"

Derek snorts. "No."

"Really? You mean there's not some species-wide code that forbids getting romantically entangled with a human? That's actually a bummer, I thought we were all star-crossed--"

Without warning, a huge shape (a deer? No, doesn't smell like a deer) jumps out in front of the car, and Derek has to swerve to miss it. The camaro careens over the road's shoulder and into a ditch.

Derek at least had the presence of mind to swerve to the left, so that the driver's side bears the brunt of the damage. He feels his collarbone snap as his body slams forward, and the impact of the crash makes his ears ring.

"Stiles? Stiles!" The car has stopped at an angle, almost sideways, and Derek can't get his door open. 

"Nnh." There's a thick trickle of blood already making its way from Stiles' forehead down his face. But he's conscious, his eyes blinking open, and Derek can't spot any immediately obvious broken bones.

"Can you get your door open? We're going to have to climb out through your side." Derek's door is practically wedged against the ground, the angle's so steep.

Stiles seems to wake up, fumbling at his seat belt. "I think so?" 

The passenger door opens without a problem, but Stiles seems to have some difficulty getting out. Derek can't tell if it's just the way the car has crashed, or if it's because Stiles is injured. Derek keeps fighting down wave after wave of panic and fear.

Finally Stiles is out of the car, and Derek pulls himself out immediately after. He grabs for Stiles as soon as they're both on the ground. "Your head, you're hurt--"

"I'm fine," Stiles says, and his voice at least sounds clearer now. He frowns and touches Derek's shoulder. "But your collarbone."

"Already healing." Derek knows it's a stupid impulse to give in to right now, but he does so anyway, cupping Stiles' face in both hands and kissing him hard.

Stiles only kisses back for a second before pulling back. "Do we know what hit us, or what almost hit us?" He looks over Derek's shoulder at the road, and blinks. "Is that a fucking centaur?"

The thing that stepped in front of their car is now charging at them, and yes, it looks like a centaur. It leaps at them and Derek grabs Stiles around the shoulders, dragging them both out of the way, careful to ensure that his body hits the ground first and cushions the blow for Stiles. 

He rolls and gets up, roaring to draw the thing's attention away from Stiles. The creature is horrifying when Derek gets a real look at it: it has the torso of a human, but it's as if the creator couldn't quite get the details right--a horse's mouth with huge, jagged teeth juts out where the human jaw should be, and its hands have claws (werewolves' claws, Derek realizes). Its eyes are brown and dead-looking, just like the harpies.

Derek throws himself forward and succeeds in tackling the centaur to the ground, though he can feel its claws ripping across his back as he goes down with it. And then he's dealing with the hooves, which break several of his ribs and possibly crack his sternum, but finally he's able to gouge deeply enough into its throat that the thing 'dies.' If it's anything like the harpies, he has only seconds before it comes back to life.

Behind him, Stiles is swinging his backpack to try and fend off a second one. Derek guts it from behind, and Stiles gets sprayed with centaur blood when it goes down. 

"Run," Derek says, but Stiles is already shaking his head. 

"You'll be outnumbered, and you can't kill them. Our only shot at getting out of this is magic against magic." 

The first centaur Derek killed is already stirring. "Do you have something in mind?"

"Maybe? I need time, I need--some kind of shelter--" otherwise the centaurs might get to him or knock loose his concentration while he works. 

"Okay," Derek says, and grabs Stiles' hand, pulling him back towards the ruined Camaro and giving him a boost so he can climb in through the tilted passenger door. Derek manages to climb in after him and yank the mangled door shut just as the centaurs get there, screeching and hurlimg themselves against the car.

"We're getting back into the car wreck we just got out of, this is so fucked up," Stiles says. The driver's side has been too effectively crunched for Stiles to get down there, which means they're squished together on the passenger seat, with gravity trying to pull Derek on top of Stiles. Derek does his best to avoid crushing him.

"What do you need?" Derek asks. The car thumps and shakes as centaurs smash themselves into it.

"Um, I need some kind of magical substance to channel my willpower," Stiles says, giving Derek a guilty look. Derek doesn't ask what that means--they don't exactly have a supply of mountain ash or aconite lying around, but they do have a werewolf.

Derek uses a claw to slice open the thick veins of his wrist, wordlessly holding his arm out to Stiles. Stiles takes it, letting the blood flow over his hands. His eyes close, and Derek knows he's now focused on whatever magic thing he's trying to do. Derek squeezes Stiles' fingers and slides his other hand around Stiles' shoulders, pulling him close.

Stiles' heart beats faster and Derek can see the beads of sweat gleaming on his forehead. The centaurs outside are still bellowing and throwing themselves against the car, until suddenly they're not. Derek can hear galloping that gets further away, and then it's silent.

"Stiles. Stiles!" 

Derek has to shake him before Stiles opens his eyes. "Did it work?" 

"They left. What did you do?"

Stiles closes his eyes again. "Honestly, I don't really know. I just kind of thought really hard about them leaving us alone. I guess they went back to the Mad Librarian guy."

Derek calls a tow truck for the car while Stiles calls Deaton to tell him what happened and see if he has an explanation for whatever it was Stiles just did. Derek can hear both sides of the conversation, even though Stiles wanders away for privacy while he talks. Deaton seems surprised to hear that Stiles was successful at forcing the centaurs away, and thinks that the adrenaline gave his magic a boost. He doesn’t think that Stiles killed them or sent them away for good--probably the swell of protective energy confused them, and made them retreat back to wherever they came from.

“And Deaton thinks that they came after the car because of you,” Stiles says. “It makes sense--your identity is the most open and obvious of all of us. There’ll probably be more hybrids creeping around your house.”

Derek shrugs. “I’ll deal with it.”

Stiles smacks him lightly on the shoulder. “No, dumbass. The possessed frankenstein monsters who can’t be killed are not something you’re just going to ‘deal with,’ at least not tonight. You can stay at my place.”

Derek shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. He feels like he should protest more, but instead he just manages to say "Oh," and falls silent.

The tow truck driver gives them a ride to Stiles' house, and thankfully, it looks as if the Sheriff is working tonight. Derek gets to enter via the front door. Stiles sags almost as soon as they step inside, the night's events catching up to him. Derek is tensed, waiting for Stiles to make a lewd joke or proposition him, but by the time they get upstairs to Stiles' room, he's yawning so hard Derek can hear his jaw crack.

The last (and only) time Derek spent the night here, it was because he was wanted for murder, and Stiles had still been jittery and nervous around him, obviously believing that just because Derek hadn’t killed anyone in this specific instance, didn’t mean that he wasn’t a dangerous killer. Stiles had given him a camping pad to sleep on, which barely made the floor any more comfortable. 

This time, Stiles just points Derek vaguely in the direction of the bed, already changing into his pajamas while he talks. “Do you want me to try and dig up something for you to sleep in? We’ve already established that mine are too small, but I can grab one of my dad’s old t-shirts.”

“No, I’m fine.” Derek averts his eyes while Stiles changes. He’s kind of surprised at how unself-conscious Stiles is while stripping--he can’t tell if this is because Stiles is treating this as a locker-room situation, or if it’s due to some level of comfort that Stiles feels with Derek, specifically. Derek tries to appear just as casual as he takes off his jacket, pants and shoes.

Stiles throws himself onto the bed with gusto. “Don’t you dare judge me for not brushing my teeth before bed, it’s not every day that I engage in what was essentially a wizard duel.”

Derek rolls his eyes as he lies down next to Stiles. The bed is big enough for this not to be awkward, but only barely. “That was not a wizard duel.”

“Close enough.”

Stiles gives him a dopey, sleepy grin before turning over on his side, facing the window. Unless Stiles is somehow able to fall asleep while feeling massively uncomfortable or nervous, he really doesn’t feel weird about sharing a bed with Derek, and he doesn’t expect anything.

Derek rolls over on his side, facing away from Stiles. It takes a while before his nerves settle down enough for him to even feel how tired he is, and longer than that for him to drift off.

He wakes up to the feeling of being stared at. 

“Oh shit, sorry, didn’t realize you were awake, didn’t mean to be creepy,” Stiles says when Derek shifts, glancing over his shoulder. 

“Oh,” Derek says, still mostly asleep. He twists until he’s on his back again, and Stiles’ face comes into view. It’s not light outside yet. “What time is it?”

“Like five a.m. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Which happens to me a lot, and usually this is when I just play World of Warcraft until it’s time to get ready for school, but I didn’t want to wake you up, so sorry that I woke you up anyway. Hey, you’re smiling.”

“Mm. I smile sometimes.” Derek shifts, feeling hazy and more comfortable than he has in a long time. He could fall back asleep easily, but being awake with Stiles is just as appealing.

Stiles doesn’t seem to have noticed the fact that Derek woke up with an erection. Derek can’t remember what he was dreaming about, but it must have been something nice, because it’s left him feeling warm and pleased and a little restless.

He reaches up to curl his hand around Stiles’ jaw to tug his face down, but Stiles is already bending toward him, and they meet in the middle. Stiles’ lips are dry and a little chapped, and he doesn’t open his mouth immediately. When he finally does part his lips and let Derek slide his tongue in, he makes a muffled, needy sound that goes straight to Derek’s dick.

Everything just feels good. Derek pulls Stiles in close and Stiles spreads his hands out over Derek’s back, his fingers clenching in the fabric of Derek’s t-shirt. They keep kissing and now their thighs are touching, too, and Derek can feel Stiles’ heartbeat hot against his chest. For once Derek doesn’t think about this, just lets it happen, their tongues sliding against each other and Stiles’ teeth on his lips. He feels like he’s traveling down toward something that he can’t see yet, but somehow knows is good. 

And then he feels Stiles’ fingers skate over his spine to palm his ass. The material of Derek’s boxers is so thin that Derek feels the touch like a lightning bolt, bringing him back to himself and back to his head. He starts to pull away, but Stiles leans in as he leans out, and catches his teeth on Derek’s neck. Stiles is still groping his ass, his fingers trailing over the cleft and brushing the sensitive back of Derek’s thigh.

Derek groans. He’s always been so terrified of helplessness, but now it seems welcoming. All it takes is a slight shift of his hips and his dick is pushing against Stiles’ thigh. Stiles pulls him in closer and now Derek can feel Stiles’ cock pressing into his stomach.

“Jesus, Derek, I want to fuck you so bad.”

Stiles pulls away from Derek’s collarbone immediately, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud. But all Derek can think of is “You can,” which comes out of his mouth before he can think about it for half a second.

“Wait, really?” Stiles says, pulling back to look Derek in the eye. Stiles’ pupils are blown and he’s breathing heavily. The image is getting in the way of Derek’s ability to think anything through.

But even if he were capable of rationality, he thinks he might come to the same conclusion, which is that he trusts Stiles enough to make this decision for both of them. Derek trusts Stiles and he wants him and he wants this, more than anything.

“Yeah,” Derek says. “I want you to.”

“Fuck,” Stiles says. “Okay, _fuck,_ ” and kisses Derek hard before pulling back and saying “Fuck, okay, fuck, let me get lube.”

Stiles scrambles off the bed to go rummage through his top dresser drawer and Derek strips off his shirt and boxers before lying back down on the bed. When Stiles turns around and sees him, he comes to an abrupt stop with his mouth open.

“What? Come here,” Derek says. It’s chilly now that he’s naked and Stiles isn’t on top of him.

“You make me embarrassed for myself,” Stiles says. “In a good way I mean, jesus _christ._ ” 

Derek is saved from having to find a way to respond to what was apparently a compliment by Stiles jumping on the bed and reattaching his mouth to Derek's mouth. Stiles' hands are roaming over Derek's body even more eagerly now, and Derek hisses when Stiles scrapes a fingernail over one nipple. 

"Does that feel good? You have to tell me what feels good," Stiles says earnestly, and wraps his hand around Derek's dick.

Derek's hips jump completely of their own accord. "Yeah, that feels good," he says. Stiles squeezes tighter and moves his palm over the head and Derek doesn't manage to say anything else.

Stiles' palm is rough and callused, but the added friction somehow just makes the sensations more intense-the pain doesn't get in the way. He's pumping into Stiles' hand and grasping for Stiles' shoulder, and he has to press his face into Stiles' neck because he's afraid of whatever look is on his face.

"Okay, I'm just gonna," Stiles says, and disentangles himself briefly to get some lotion on his fingers. It's a relief when he presses his index finger into Derek's hole, because it hurts, brings him back to earth a little bit, makes him feel less like he's fucking losing it.

Except Stiles immediately takes his fingers away, already concerned. "Oh fuck, sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, we can go slower or--"

"Shut up," Derek says, grabbing Stiles' wrist and pulling his hand back to where it was. Stiles laughs but takes the hint, resting the palm of his hand lightly against Derek's balls as he slides his finger in again. He pushes it in deeper this time, all at once. It's not gentle and it's exactly what Derek wants.

Stiles pushes himself up on his knees in front of Derek. With both hands free instead of one pinned under him, he wraps his left hand around Derek's dick while his right is occupied by stretching Derek open. Stiles is clumsier, less strong with his left hand, but it still makes Derek arch straight off the bed. 

Stiles adds a second finger. It fucking burns, it's just barely this side of too much, and it makes Derek's toes curl with how much more he wants. 

"Okay stop," Derek says, and Stiles freezes until Derek continues, "You can fuck me now."

"Seriously?" Stiles says. "You feel ready? I mean, not to brag or anything, but my penis is thicker than my fingers."

"I have a high pain tolerance, it's fine," Derek says. It's like Stiles' fingers in his asshole have unlocked something, some deep-seated urge that's been asleep in him ever since Kate. He wants to get thrown over and used and worked until he's utterly spent. He wants Stiles to fuck him until he can't think anymore. He's never felt so vulnerable, or so okay with being vulnerable, in his life.

"But I don't _want_ to hurt you," Stiles says. His fingers slide abruptly out of Derek and he rests his hands on his knees, hesitant and too far away.

Derek sits up and grabs for Stiles' head, pulling him in for a kiss. He scrapes his fingers through Stiles' short hair, rubbing at his scalp when Stiles pushes back into it. 

"Just trust me, I want this," Derek says. It's not a solid argument, but he doesn't know how to say how important it is that Stiles not be gentle with him.

"Okay, you got it." Stiles' voice is completely breathless, and he sucks Derek's tongue into his mouth when Derek gives him a last kiss before pulling back.

Stiles reaches for the lotiom again, slicking himself up. Derek makes himself stop staring to turn over onto his hands and knees, the position making him feel vaguely foolish. That only lasts for a second though, because then Stiles grabs his hip and presses his dick against Derek's hole. It's bigger, rounder and softer than Stiles' fingertips, and just the slight press of it makes Derek groan. 

"All right, I'm going in. Sorry--f-for joking--"

Stiles' voice stutters and cuts off as he pushes in. It's slow at first, and then it's like he gets momentum or something because there's a sudden slide of so much at once. It makes Derek's muscles scream and it's so much fucking bigger than what Derek felt before, it's taking his body to the limit and the pain, the pressure overrides Derek's arousal, overrides everything.

Stiles strokes a hand down Derek's side, over his ribs. "Are you okay? Can I go deeper?"

Derek nods. To emphasize how fine he is, he pushes back on Stiles' dick, which sends a deliciously white-hot wave of pain through him. He can feel his erection flagging.

Stiles pets him again and pushes in, slow and steady. Derek can feel the ring of muscle at his hole fighting it every inch of the way, and the ease as his body adjusts to it. It starts to actually feel good, as opposed to the more complicated kind of pleasure that came from the pain. 

"Wow," Stiles says, succinctly articulating Derek's own thoughts. He reaches down to cup Derek's balls and run his hand over Derek's dick, hardening it again. Derek pushes himself back onto Stiles' cock again and it feels better this time, sending bright sparks of pleasure through his belly.

Stiles takes the hint and gives him an experimental thrust. Derek groans and Stiles does it again, harder this time, and the whole thing starts to feel very, very right. 

"Oh my god," Stiles says as his thrusts get harder, more enthusiastic. "You feel amazing--oh my god, Derek--"

"Yeah," Derek gasps. He feels like he’s being split apart, and every thrust moves him further forward on the bedsheets, until his forehead bumps the wall. He’s strong enough that he could easily dig in, push back and stop himself from being shoved down the bed, but instead he braces his forearms against the wall and takes it. He feels raw and loose and passive, which he never expected to be the kind of relief that it is.

Stiles’ thrusts begin to get faster and more uneven, and he lets go of Derek’s dick to clutch at his hip. His fingers dig in and spasm and Derek can feel the tension behind him, taut against him. Stiles thrusts deep and his hips pump erratically, and then Derek feels a whoosh of breath on his neck as Stiles collapses against him.

Derek closes his eyes for the few seconds that Stiles stays there, breathing heavily and holding Derek tight. Then Stiles pulls out and falls sideways, and Derek looks over to look at him sprawled on the bed. His soft dick is slick and messy with come, and his chest is flushed and sticky with sweat. His mouth is open, jaw slack, and his cheeks are bright red. 

Derek wants to come on him. He's surprised by the suddenness and intensity of the desire--it's some instinct that he's never had cause to acknowledge before, and he doesn't know if it's a side effect of being an alpha or if it's just a part of him.

And he's too desperate right now to try and hide it. Derek groans and grabs his dick, positioning himself over Stiles' chest. "Can I--?"

"Wha-- oh, you wanna do it on me? Uh, sure that's cool," Stiles says, obviously still reeling from his own orgasm. But he positions himself under Derek's dick and settles back on the covers, so he really does seem okay with it.

He also leans his head back to stare up at Derek, exposing his neck and meeting Derek's eyes. That's all it takes. Derek squeezes his fist tighter around himself and comes, shooting over Stiles' collarbone and nipples. 

Any conscious thought is pretty much done for when he's finished. Derek sinks down onto the bed and tries not to feel guilty at how satisfying it is to see his own come on Stiles' skin.

"I feel like I'm in a porno," Stiles murmurs. "In a good way, I mean." 

He doesn't seem bothered by it. Derek watches as Stiles curiously touches a finger to the line of semen on his chest, then licks his finger clean. 

Jesus, Derek can't even fucking look at that. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his face into Stiles' shoulder. 

"Huh, it doesn't taste bad," Stiles says. "Next time you should come in my mouth."

Derek bites back a whimper as his dick makes a valiant effort to get hard again, but even with his accelerated healing, that's not possible. "Okay."

"I am so fucking in love with you, man. Sorry, I know it's super cliché to say that after or during sex, but uh, I have no filter between my brain and my mouth right now, so yeah."

Derek sits up enough to stare at Stiles, who stares placidly back like it's the most natural thing in the world to be in love with Derek. He really does seem sort of sex-stupid, and Derek finds it horrifically endearing. 

"Yeah. I love you," Derek says, hating the stiffness of his own voice. He thought it would be terrifying to say it out loud, and it is, but it's also a relief. 

A huge relief, actually, like some lump of metal breaking his back has been removed. Derek feels lighter. He also might be shaking slightly.

Stiles pulls him in for a kiss. "Wanna do this more often?" Derek just nods.

***

“Stiles, you’re going to be late!”

Derek doesn't remember falling asleep, but he must have, because now he's waking up to the sound of Sheriff Stilinski pounding on the door and yelling that Stiles is going to be late for school. His body reacts to the sound before his mind is even slightly awake, and when he rolls off the bed to stand in a ready crouch on the floor, he takes most of the bedding with him.

“Uhmygod,” Stiles says, flailing and sitting up. “I’ll be out in a sec, just getting dressed!” he shouts, and Derek holds his breath until he hears the Sheriff sigh and walk away from the door. 

“Oh my God, I just had a heart attack,” Stiles says, his hand over his heart for emphasis. On his cheek is the imprint of the folds in his pillowcase. “And you look like you’re ready to kill a small woodland creature, do you realize you’re all wolfed out?”

Derek straightens, and his teeth retract. He’d sort of realized. Now that the adrenaline’s leaving his system, he feels very groggy and disoriented. “Shut up.”

Stiles smirks at him for a second before his face gets serious and he scrambles out of bed. “Shit, we’ve got to get you out of here. Um, is your super speed enough that you could get out the door like a blur without him seeing you, all Flash-like?”

Derek snorts. “I doubt it. The window’s fine.”

Stiles sighs. “You escaping out the window makes me feel like I’m being super illicit and secretive. Which I guess I am, but.” Derek opens his mouth to say--he doesn’t know, something comforting, but Stiles waves it away. “It’s fine, it’s cool. You should go and I’ll get dressed for school and we’ll see each other later, it’s cool!”

Derek can smell and hear it as Stiles’ anxiety heightens, as if he’s just now processing everything that’s happened, everything they’ve done. Derek wants to stay and grab him and do something to calm his heartbeat, but Stiles is already shooing him towards the other window and it’s not like he’s wrong to be unconcerned: the Sheriff’s footsteps are coming back upstairs.

“C’mon, get out of here,” Stiles says, kissing Derek quickly before Derek opens the window and climbs out onto the roof, getting out of sight just seconds before the Sheriff knocks on Stiles’ door again. 

Stiles texts him later that day, and Derek pretends that getting the notification doesn’t make his face feel warm. _sorry for this morning. i was just a little stressed about my dad. but im really glad you spent the night._

Derek texts back _I’m glad too_. It’s not until after he sends it that he realizes he never deliberated about what to say, didn’t obsess over word choice or how much emotion was okay to express in the conversation; he just replied without a second thought, without stressing about it. Talking to Stiles, whether it’s through the phone or in person, feels comfortable, easy, and right.

The realization just makes him want to run. He’d known, no matter how much he tried to live in denial, that he was in love with Stiles, but somehow knowing that it’s returned is even more terrifying. As is the knowledge that they’re both getting used to this. Derek isn’t so stupid that he thinks it won’t end eventually, that he’ll fuck it up somehow and Stiles will leave him or die. The more attached they get, the worse it will be for both of them--Derek is being selfish and stupid and unkind--

And it’s like his current happiness is powerful enough to drive all of these uncomfortable truths out of his mind. Which is disturbing, but difficult to be concerned about. Regardless of how loudly his common sense is screaming at him to end this now, Derek isn’t listening. 

It’s a long day before Derek hears Stiles’ Jeep pull up outside the house. Derek is on the porch waiting for him before he kills the engine, and then Derek’s rocking back on his heels because Stiles’ whole weight is on him, warm lips on his mouth and enthusiastic, bony arms wrapping around him. 

“I think we should have sex on your depressing futon right now,” Stiles says. “Or we could do it in your car, or my car. I just think we should cover all bases of each other’s living arrangements, you know?”

“Okay,” Derek says, not really following the logic but not caring at all. “I love you.”

Stiles sucks in a sharp breath and his eyes go wide. “Wow. Yeah. I know, I mean, I love you too. I didn’t--it’s kind of crazy, hearing you say it. Hearing you say it _again_ , I mean.” 

Derek nods and kisses Stiles as slow and deep as he can. Stiles’ mouth tastes like soda, and there’s nothing that Derek wants more than the feel of Stiles’ teeth scraping over Derek’s tongue, over and over until they’re both dead. Nothing has changed, this is still doomed, Derek’s still not ever going to get something happy and good, but it’s like the universe has granted him a temporary reprieve. And he’s getting better at pretending that he can just live within this forever.

"Holy shit," Stiles squeaks when Derek lifts him up off the ground, guides Stiles' legs to wrap around his waist, and carries him inside the house. "You are such a show-off and this is not impressive, by the way, I am not impressed by this because it's not manly strength that you earned at the gym it's just standard werewolf strength, and I will not be so easily wooed."

"Liar." Derek braces Stiles against the wall and hitches him higher, until he's at eye level with Stiles' collarbone. He hears a hitch in Stiles' breath, which means that Stiles held back a moan when Derek bit gently at his neck.

“Okay, I admit that your balance is a little impressive, but being strong enough to carry me places? Pfft. No big deal.” Stiles likes talking, he likes talking even when Derek is clutching his ass and sucking a hickey onto his neck. Derek likes listening. He can feel Stiles’ erection pressing against his stomach, and it hits him that they could do this for the rest of the night, if they wanted to. They can also do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, because nothing--it doesn’t _seem_ like anything is stopping them.

Derek steps back, letting Stiles slide down until his feet are on the floor again. They’re eye-to-eye and the look in Stiles’ eyes is not something that Derek deserves, but he’s so stupidly grateful to get it anyway. 

“C’mon, bedroom,” Stiles says, tugging on Derek’s shirt.

“No,” Derek says, taking a step back. Stiles frowns and opens his mouth to argue, but Derek is already dropping to his knees and unbuttoning the fly of Stiles’ jeans. 

“You’re the one who suggested we cover all our bases,” Derek says, and feels far more smug than the situation warrants when Stiles is too stunned for a comeback. He smirks up at him as he pulls Stiles’ pants down, and keeps eye contact when he fits Stiles’ cock into his mouth.

Stiles finally finds his words, sputtering “I can’t _believe_ you” and digging his fingers into Derek’s hair. The front door is wide open; Derek has never cared less about being seen.

Derek doesn’t get the hang of sucking cock immediately. His jaw starts getting sore faster than he expected, and Stiles hisses when Derek accidentally lets his teeth graze the head. But then he gets a rhythm going, and he discovers he doesn’t have much in the way of a gag reflex, and Stiles starts gasping when Derek swallows around him, when Derek takes his cock all the way down.

“Tell me if I--tell me if this is rude,” Stiles says, his voice barely more of a gasp, before he grips Derek’s head and starts thrusting into his mouth, into his throat. It’s intense: Derek’s face is pressed into Stiles’ pubic hair and he has to concentrate on breathing. All he can do is hold still and let Stiles fuck his mouth. It feels like he’s out of control, it feels like he’s choking.

Derek loves it so much that he thinks he could come just from this. He’s so hard that his jeans have gotten extremely uncomfortable, and all he wants is for Stiles to keep using him. But it doesn’t last. Stiles comes with a sputtering groan, and his dick is so deep into Derek’s throat that Derek barely tastes it before he’s swallowing automatically.

Stiles lets go of him and slumps back against the wall, and Derek sits back on his heels. He wipes his mouth. The soreness in his jaw and the rough feeling in his throat are already gone. 

“Okay. Okay. Okay.” Stiles sounds like he’s trying to get reality to line back up with itself. Derek stands, and Stiles reaches out to clumsily touch his shoulder, his fingers dragging down the fabric of Derek’s t-shirt.

“You’re amazing,” Stiles says, and he sounds so earnest and star-struck that Derek holds back a laugh. But he doesn’t laugh when Stiles shoves his tongue into Derek’s mouth, because it’s a reminder of how uncomfortably hard he still is, and laughing is the furthest thing from his mind when Stiles shoves a hand down Derek’s pants.

“I wanna blow you, too, but I wanna do it on the futon because the floor is hard and I have wimpy human knees,” Stiles says. Derek doesn’t argue.

Stiles blows him cautiously, not taking too much into his mouth at once and using a lot of tongue, licking at the head of Derek’s dick until Derek is worried he’ll explode. It’s not enough to push him over the edge until Stiles wraps his hand around the base of Derek’s cock and strokes him while he mouths the head. Stiles’ grip is firm and so tight and Derek can’t stop his hips are bucking. Stiles has this look of deep concentration on his face, his eyes closed and his eyebrows furrowed and his lips wrapped around Derek’s dick. 

He pulls off briefly to say, “Tell me when you’re close,” and all Derek can do is nod. Stiles’ tongue slicks a wide swath over the cockhead before the tip of his tongue comes back to the glans. It’s the lewdest, most obscene thing Derek has seen in his life, and. And he wants this to last forever but he is right fucking there.

“I’m close--”

Stiles stops licking and turns his face away, but he keeps it up with his hand, his grip tighter and harder until Derek is coming. Stiles purposefully catches Derek’s come on his cheek, gasping slightly when the semen first hits him and holding his face in position until Derek is spent.

Derek stares. Stiles brushes his lips over the sensitive head one last time before sitting up and looking down at Derek, one eyebrow raised. He doesn’t wipe his cheek.

Derek groans. “I--I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, dude. I thought I was pretty clear about doing that on purpose. I like that you like it.” 

Derek does like it. He’s embarrassed by how much he likes it. But Stiles doesn’t seem to be embarrassed: he eventually wipes it off with a corner of his t-shirt, which he then strips off before lying down and pushing at Derek until Derek is on his side and Stiles can fit behind him.

Both their heartbeats are loud in Derek’s ear. Stiles pushes his nose against the nape of Derek’s neck, and his hand settles on Derek’s side. They both still have their pants mostly on, and Derek vaguely thinks that that should be rectified, but it seems like a monumental effort at the moment.

“You make me feel kinda like Superman,” Stiles says, the words tickling Derek’s earlobe. 

Derek laughs. “You make me feel human.” Realizing that the words could be misconstrued, he adds, “In a good way,” and Stiles laughs.

“Right, I got it.” Derek can feel Stiles settling in, relaxing and letting his limbs sink into the mattress. The weight of his arm is heavy on Derek’s ribs. 

Don’t hope; don’t hold onto this too hard; be ready when the other shoe drops. That’s what Derek knows he has to do, but he’s not doing it even slightly, and he knows he’s not going to start. 

Stiles comes over the next day, too, and the day after that. The next day Derek goes over to Stiles’ house, and the day after that is a gray rainy Saturday, which means Stiles comes over in the morning and they spend the day in bed, having sex four times.

At some point, when Derek is over at Stiles’ place, idly looking over Stiles’ shoulder while Stiles does his calculus homework, Stiles blinks up at him and says, “I think we’ve had sex every day this week.”

Derek feels immediately flooded with guilt and shame. But Stiles doesn’t look upset or horrified at what he’s let Derek do to him; he looks amused and kind of proud. “Have we?” Derek says cautiously.

Stiles nods, the smugness now radiating from him. “I never expected to get laid regularly in high school, man, this is amazing. I feel like a sexual superstar.”

Derrek doesn’t bother to hide his smile. “Don’t ever use that phrase again,” he says, and kisses him. 

“You like it when I say dumb things,” Stiles says when they’ve parted. “Like calling myself an Orgasmic Overachiever. Or the Lord of Libidos.”

Derek hauls Stiles to his feet, the calc homework forgotten. “Jesus, please stop.”

Stiles lets himself be led to the bed, a crooked and goofy smile on his face like he can’t stop himself from laughing at his own joke. “I’ve probably had more sex just in the past week than any of the First Line lacrosse players have. Hell, maybe I’ve had more sex in a week than they’ve had all month. I should do a survey and find out.”

Derek catches Stiles’ face in his hands, kissing Stiles through his giggles and snickering. “Stiles,” he says, and lets his happiness come through in his voice. “Shut up.”


End file.
